The film Before You Wake – Discover Tesla’s Secret Invention was written and directed by Branislav Brkić with the Belgrade-based Ringišpil studio, and the Croatian co-producer is Helena Bulaja Madunić and her company Moje Čarobne Misli. In its conceptual stage, the film entered the market’s competition and among thousands of entries was selected as one of the 60 projects presented to leading European financiers, distributers and co-production partners. The project was presented as cross-media, aiming to work hand-in-hand on the development and production of both a feature-length animated film and a video game. The target audience is families and the young population.

The film and the video game in a particularly interesting way follow the 12-year-old girl Ada, who accidentally discovers that her world is in fact Tesla’s dream, which slowly begins to fade. Wishing to help Tesla regain his energy in order to complete his final invention, which would make people live happy and peaceful lives on earth fully, Ada experiences many adventures and encounters with real characters from Tesla’s life, travelling through his real spaces of work and accomplishment, gathering his patents, memories and forgotten and stolen inventions.

A special interest in the film and video game distribution was demonstrated by some of the leading European commercial distributers, like the French Ubisoft, one of the most important global publishers and video game distributers, and the English SCFilms International, a company dedicated to distribution of European animated hits.

Cartoon Movie is the most important pitching forum and market for the production of feature-length animated films in the EU, and more information is available on this link.

Title photographs: the Lyon presentation, source: © CARTOON