THE WILD ROBOT
Section: Gala Presentations
Director: Chris Sanders
Screenwriter: Chris Sanders
Logline: Featuring the voices of Pedro Pascal, Catherine O’Hara, Lupita Nyong’o, Stephanie Hsu, and Bill Nighy, this DreamWorks Animation sci-fi adventure follows a robot designed to assist humans who finds herself stranded on an island populated exclusively by beasts.
Panelists: Chris Sanders, Lupita Nyong’o, Stephanie Hsu, Catherine O’Hara
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Premiered: Sept 8
Key Quote: “In the beginning [Roz] has the naïveté of a child, she’s almost like a blank slate. Yes, she’s a sophisticated robot but she doesn’t have any unique or identifying features from all the other robots that exist, but by the end she’s adapted and evolved so much that she has something akin to empathy and compassion.” – Lupita Nyong’o
“The movie is also so much about imagination and storytelling and what that brings to a community. And when I imagine all the little creatures in my life getting to see this film, and that feeling of the texture of, ‘I can pick up a marker and draw that,’ I think that is something that is so lost now and this movie really is such a nod to what we all grew up with in the world of animation. It’s so awesome, and alive and human.” – Stephanie Hsu
“The wilderness and how it’s so violent and its all about survival, it’s so raw and it had nothing to do with compassion, or what these animals learn throughout the movie, but not in a ‘hit you over the head’ kind of way at all. It’s so subtle and beautiful.” – Catherine O’Hara
“It’s so exciting, the theme that this is an unforgiving place and Roz sees it as their programming. I like that she’s putting it in terms she understands. So she says, ‘Your programming…’ and it is, they’re programmed to survive and it’s incredibly selfish. If they’re not absolutely selfish, they won’t see another day.” – Chris Sanders
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