Ruby Stokes, Emily Carey, Sebastian Croft, Michael Maloney (voices)
Waltz with Bashir director Ari Folman returns with another animated marvel about a teenage girl on a journey to find Anne Frank, screened in Competition at Cannes 2021.
Anne Frank called her diary – famously written in hiding from the Nazis in wartime Amsterdam – Kitty, addressing it as a friend, and here, Folman brings Kitty (voiced by Ruby Stokes) to life for the first time. Telling her own story, while searching for her best friend Anne (voiced by Emily Carey), Kitty bears witness to the Frank family’s last months of survival during the Holocaust, and subsequently the rebirth of Europe after the Second World War.
By re-exploring Anne Frank through her time-travelling friend, depicting her plight in vividly beautiful animation, and by bringing Kitty into the present day city as well as roaming the Amsterdam of her memories, Folman – himself the son of Holocaust survivors – filters Anne’s famous story through a contemporary lens, giving it a modern identity and making it more accessible to a younger generation at a time of rising antisemitism (for which reason he was commissioned to make the film). But he’s also, urgently, asking his older audience to contemplate their idolatry of Anne and their use of her as a symbol at the same time as they tolerate or support politics that refute the humanist legacy of her life and writing. Bold and richly imaginative, beautifully soundtracked by Karen O and Ben Goldwasser, Where is Anne Frank (no question mark) is a forceful, creative and timely film, part reminder and part retelling.