Gandahar (1987) is one of those films that feels like it came from a parallel universe of French animation. It is René Laloux’s third and final feature film, following Fantastic Planet and Time Masters, and is based on the 1969 novel Les Hommes-machines contre Gandahar by Jean-Pierre Andrevon 📚 Set in a seemingly peaceful utopian future, the film follows Sylvain as he investigates an army of mysterious machine-men threatening Gandahar, leading him into a story involving evolution, genetic experimentation, and time travel The most important figure to understand it is Philippe Caza. Laloux began developing the project with Caza in the mid-1970s, shortly after Fantastic Planet. Caza designed the characters, creatures, and environments, and his aesthetic is essentially what makes Gandahar what it is: strange bodies, organic architecture, gigantic plants, and a futuristic civilization that looks like it came straight out of a 1970s European science-fiction illustration. Caza himself has explained that the project spent years struggling to secure funding before finally becoming a reality 🎥

Art by @KyleHotz 🔥