A beguiling and big-hearted animated reimagining of Anne Frank’s story from the lauded director of Waltz With Bashir (MIFF 2008).

The first feature film in eight long years from Israeli director Ari Folman (The Congress, MIFF 2013), Where Is Anne Frank approaches the famous Holocaust diary from the perspective of Kitty (voiced by Bridgerton’s Ruby Stokes), the imaginary girl to whom Anne addressed her correspondence. In this wondrous retelling, Kitty comes to life in modern Amsterdam and embarks on a time-hopping adventure to uncover the mystery of Anne’s whereabouts. As she searches for her friend, she discovers a whole host of other people who, like Anne, have been placed in an impossible situation.

Depicting Anne’s world through a masterful blend of hand-drawn and stop-motion animation, Folman puts the diarist’s much-mythologised writing into dialogue with the present-day refugee crisis, examining how commemoration can reduce people to symbols – and the limits of compassion when faced with such iconography. Where Is Anne Frank is a breathtaking, timely work that melds fantasy and memory, history and hope, from one of our era’s most inventive screen storytellers.

“A visionary animated update of a Holocaust story that needed retelling … Vital, creative, and sociopolitically urgent.” – IndieWire