Ernest & Celestine: Animated Sequel Hits Italian Cinemas December 22

The animated film 'Ernest e Celestine – L’avventura delle 7 note' will be released in Italian cinemas on December 22, distributed by I Wonder Pictures. Italian voice actors Alba Rohrwacher and Claudio Bisio lend their voices to the characters. The story follows Ernest and Celestine traveling to Ostrogallia, the legendary homeland of great musicians, to repair Ernest's violin, a Stradivorso. However, they discover music has been banned there. The film premiered as a special event at the Annecy Festival 2022 and is directed by Jean-Christophe Roger and Julien Chheng. Co-director Roger drew inspiration for the landscapes from his travels along the Silk Road, specifically the Karakoram Highway, the Kalasha valleys of northern Pakistan, and the Gilgit River. Architecture in the film references Turkey and old districts of Tbilisi, Georgia. For animation, Chheng described a process involving pre-montage with rapid sketches, then detailed layouts, followed by twelve months of animation by artists using pens on screens. Coloring was done by a team in Luxembourg, and final assembly at Fost studio in Paris. A picture book adaptation is also being published by Gallucci, exclusive publisher of Gabrielle Vincent's works, who created the original Ernest and Celestine characters.