Malcolm Rambert

One of the joys and burdens of being an animation enthusiast like myself is being on the hunt for different projects and stuff to watch from anywhere I stumble upon. Sometimes it’s cool to find something not a lot of people know about and you get to put a spotlight on when reviewing said work or just recommending it to people.

We have now arrived at Mamoru Hosoda’s 8th directorial film project (11th if you count the Digimon films). Depending on who you ask, he’s proven himself to be able to make films with conveying a central theme without the allure of an IP attached. Whether it’s the similarly digital world-centered Summer Wars or the split-between-realms setting of The Boy and the Beast, pretty much every one of his films has to do with the idea of family and a specific relationship one can have in one.

Back in 2024, a mutual of mine from France who goes by Joff Robert online, was telling me and some others in an animation-focused server about this miniseries called Samuel. Created by Animation School of Angoulême graduate Émilie Tronche, it was about a boy named Samuel living  and produced by ARTE, a famous Franco-German publicly-funded channel and focus on pan-European culture.