A new animated Anne Frank movie brings her diary to life in modern-day Amsterdam
A disoriented teenage girl lies on Anne Frank’s bed as people swarm the family house. But these people are not Nazis; they’re modern-day tourists. And the girl on the bed isn’t Anne, but Kitty — the imaginary friend to whom she addressed her now world-famous diary.
Magically resurrected from the page and transported into modern-day Europe, Kitty is appalled by how society has fetishized her best friend Anne, hawking cheap merchandise and endless inaccurate reinterpretations of her words. Eventually she takes it upon herself to reclaim Anne’s legacy, by any means necessary.
This is the bold reimagining of Anne Frank’s story found in the new animated film “Where is Anne Frank,” which premiered last week at the Cannes Film Festival. The film was made by acclaimed Israeli director Ari Folman, best known for his 2008 Oscar-nominated animated documentary hybrid “Waltz With Bashir,” about the lasting memories of Israel’s first Lebanon War. Now Folman has tackled what many consider the sacred text of the Holocaust — rewriting Anne Frank in order to interpret her true lasting legacy.
Made in partnership with the Anne Frank Fonds, the Swiss nonprofit founded by Anne’s father, Otto, that holds the copyright to her diary, the film is aimed at younger audiences. But it also enters surprising political territory, as Kitty comes to understand Europe’s modern-day immigration crisis and begins to consciously relate the continent’s millions of asylum seekers to Anne’s story.
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