WOLFWALKERS (Animation) - Irish Film Week

WOLFWALKERS takes us to Kilkenny in 1650, where Robyn Goodfellowe arrives from England with her father, a hunter ordered to help eliminate the wolves living beyond the city walls. Robyn wants desperately to join him, but everything changes when she enters the forest and meets Mebh, a wild-haired Irish girl whose people are said to leave their bodies while sleeping and roam the woods as wolves. What begins as a hunt gradually becomes a friendship, and Robyn starts questioning everything she’s been taught about the supposedly dangerous world outside the town.

The film comes from Kilkenny-based animation studio Cartoon Saloon, whose work has developed one of the most recognisable visual languages in contemporary animation. Moore and Stewart deliberately resist the polished three-dimensional look of mainstream studio animation. The town is rigid, angular and enclosed, while the forest is loose, hand-drawn and constantly moving. As Robyn crosses between them, the animation itself becomes part of the argument about control and freedom. Irish folklore sits underneath the story, but WOLFWALKERS uses it to explore colonialism, environmental destruction and the instinct to fear whatever exists beyond the boundaries society has drawn for us.

Irish cinema isn’t usually associated with animation, but Cartoon Saloon is rapidly changing that. This one is especially for animation fans. If you like SPIRITED AWAY or SON OF THE WHITE MARE, you’re going to find a lot to love in WOLFWALKERS. It gives the week something visually unlike anything else in the program and draws directly on Irish history, landscape and mythology while remaining completely accessible as an adventure film. I’ve put it into our first Sunday slot, where it makes a great entry point for anyone who wants to experience Irish Film Week without immediately confronting Brendan Gleeson with an existential crisis.

WOLFWALKERS received Academy Award, Golden Globe and BAFTA nominations for Best Animated Feature and won Best Film at the 2021 Irish Film & Television Academy Awards. It also won five Annie Awards, including Best Independent Animated Feature and directing for Moore and Stewart, while taking major critics’ awards in Los Angeles and New York.