Why Natalie Portman Threw Her Weight Behind the French Animated Adventure ‘Arco’

It’s not every day that an Oscar-winning actress gets behind a tiny, imaginative French animated feature. But that’s what happened to Ugo Bienvenu’s gorgeous, heartfelt “Arco.”

Through a friend, Natalie Portman and her producing partner, Sophie Mas, saw an early animatic of “Arco.” “We were just completely blown away and wanted to work on it immediately,” said Portman, who in addition to producing it has two voice roles.

It’s easy to see why she was so enchanted. Arco is the story of a young boy (voiced in French by Oscar Tresanini and in English by Juliano Krue Valdi) who lives in the distant future, 2932. His parents are time travelers; they ride along rainbows and visit various points in human and pre-human history. Though he’s too young to join them, Arco is obsessed with the idea of going back in time, so he “borrows” one of the time-traveling suits. He winds up marooned in 2075, out of his element and in desperate need to return home.

“The director’s vision was so clear and so beautiful aesthetically,” Portman said. “The art was so great, and the story was so profound and meaningful and important for our moment in history too. And Ugo said something so poetic about how it was a memory of the future. That was such a gorgeous way to describe imagination for me that I was like, ‘Anything I can do to be part of this, I would love to.’”

“Arco” premiered at the Cannes Film Festival last May in the Special Screenings section, before playing at France’s Annecy International Animation Film Festival and Los Angeles’ Animation Is Film and landing a U.S. distribution deal with awards season’s busiest company, Neon.

For the American dub, Portman helped assemble an all-star cast that includes Will Ferrell, Andy Samberg, Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers, America Ferrera and Mark Ruffalo. “It was very lucky,” she said. “We had a short window between Cannes, when Neon bought the film and decided to release it in the United States, to do the English-language version. We reached out to friends who we had worked with on other projects. I think because the movie is so beautiful, everyone said yes.”

As for what the movie means, Bienvenu has a specific vision. “I hope it will be like a hug, because that was the project: a big hug,” he said. “And giving (audiences) energy to go back in life with the will to invent, to create, to draw and to share things with people you love.”

Portman added: “I think it’s really having hope through the power of imagination. We obviously are facing many challenges that are very real, but if history shows us anything, it’s that life is unpredictable, and the hope lies in being active, in having imagination and using your creativity. It’s our superpower as humans to imagine a better future and make it real.”

This story first ran in the Awards Preview issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine. Read more from the issue here.

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