The Inventor, in cinemas from 31 January 2024 in France.
A few years back, the director and screenwriter Jim Capobianco (The Lion King, Ratatouille) arrived at the Amboise châteaux with a film script. He had come to the right place and had found the perfect film set for a dive into the world of the Renaissance!
Leonardo da Vinci for young and old alike
The Inventor is an animated film that has already been released in the US. It looks at the last few years of the life of “Leo”, which sees him leaving his native Italy in 1516 to have more freedom to continue his work. Francis I made him the king’s “first painter, engineer and architect”… a job that perhaps finally left him with less time than he wanted to work on the 1001 projects he had in mind.
Alongside Leonardo da Vinci and Francis I, Pope Leo X, Marguerite de Navarre, Louise of Savoy, Charles V and Henry VIII are the other main protagonists in The Inventor. A picture is worth a thousand words, so take a look at the trailer for the film, most of which was made using the stop-motion technique (in the Foliascope animation studio, based in Drôme), consisting of photographing puppet figures image after image in real sets, at the rate of 12 positions per second. Which means… 4 seconds are filmed a day!
The French version features the magnificent voice of André Dussollier, as well as Marion Cotillard, Juliette Armanet and Gauthier Battoue. Extra reasons to enjoy an evening out at the cinema!
Exhibitions dedicated to The Inventor
To highlight the release of this wonderful film, two exhibitions are on offer at the Royal Château of Amboise and at the Château du Clos-Lucé:
- “A Journey inside the World of The Inventor“ at the Royal Château of Amboise – from 8 January to 20 April 2024.
- “The Inventor, behind the scenes of the animated film“ at the Château du Clos Lucé – From 26 January to 12 May 2024.