When You Absolutely Can't Stay
Plus: news.
Welcome! Thanks for joining us. Here’s the lineup for the latest Sunday issue of the Animation Obsessive newsletter:
1) Invisible Friends, and a window into the Russian animation diaspora.
2) Newsbits.
Now, let’s go!
1 – Leaving home
The history of animation is, in many ways, a history of expats and immigrants.
You find their names across Walt Disney’s films. Wolfgang Reitherman (of the Nine Old Men) was a German immigrant. Artists Tyrus Wong and Cy Young, essential to Bambi and Fantasia and more, came to America from China. The head director of Sleeping Beauty went by Clyde Geronimi, but he was born Clito Enrico Geronimi — in Italy.
Meanwhile, Bill Melendez (from Mexico) worked for Disney, switched to UPA and later directed A Charlie Brown Christmas — and every other Peanuts classic.
Walt Disney’s studio really wasn’t unique here. See Tissa David, an escapee from Hungary who became one of the great American animators. Norman McLaren was Canada’s top animated filmmaker of the 20th century, but he was a Scot who’d fled the war in Europe. Richard Williams (Roger Rabbit) was a Canadian in London.
There’s no end to the list. In fact, it’s growing right now.
Since 2022, Russia’s animation scene has been shrinking. Everything changed with the invasion of Ukraine: artists got out of Russia in massive numbers. And, as journalist Ethan Bien reported in 2023, that’s given rise to “diasporic Russian animation collectives in Turkey, Georgia, Armenia and elsewhere.”1
One of those collectives is Invisible Friends. It’s a remote group. These artists were very active in Moscow before the war — collaborating with Soyuzmultfilm on the lovely Stolen Melody (2022), for example. Now, they’re based mainly in Armenia and Georgia.
“We made a decision to move abroad immediately after Russia invaded Ukraine,” explains Yura Boguslavsky, the co-founder of Invisible Friends. We asked him about the situation by email. In his words:
If not for the war, I don’t think that we would have immigrated, though there were lots of talks and thoughts about that even before. None of us were quite satisfied living in a crazy, huge city like Moscow, nor could we feel confident about different political and social issues in Russia. But animation in Russia was growing amazingly, and the animation community was full of wonderful people who made us feel [like we were] in the right place. … We [still] keep our connections with colleagues and studios in Russia, and it is quite sad to observe how the community gets smaller, and censorship rises.2
There’s no doubt: Russian animation was booming before the invasion. The Invisible Friends artists were part of that boom. They’ve been together since 2010 — an art collective that does films and commissions, plus workshops and classes.
“The team members have been changing since [we started],” Boguslavsky tells us, “but the core always was four of us: Ilya Yudovich, Vasiliy Chirkov and Sasha Chirkov (who is a musician and sound artist) and I.”
Boguslavsky himself got into animation a few years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, back in the ‘90s. He was 8 years old when he began. “Many stars of Soviet animation were unemployed at that time,” he notes, “and there were a few studios for kids in places that used to be animation studios, so we had access to professional equipment.”
Early on, he learned from Vladimir Zuikov — a main artist behind the look of the Soviet Winnie-the-Pooh. Later, he would take classes from Yuri Norstein (Hedgehog in the Fog). It was Norstein’s work especially that inspired Vasiliy Chirkov, Boguslavsky’s childhood friend, to animate. (“Vasiliy has adopted Norstein’s multiplane technique and shoots all his personal projects in cutouts on cels,” adds Boguslavsky.)
The Invisible Friends people are products of that long, slow climb back from the fall of Soviet animation. Even as Boguslavsky took classes at the studio Shar during the ‘00s, it was sparsely equipped — he had to study a lot at home. “Luckily,” he writes, “it was exactly the time when good-quality DSLRs appeared, as well as Dragonframe.”
Most of the core animators at Invisible Friends are self-taught. And most of the rest of the team learned from the collective’s own stop-motion courses, running since 2014.
The years of dedication — from Invisible Friends and from the wider industry — built something strong by the early 2020s. Moscow was an animation hotspot once more, and Boguslavsky and his friends had a name. In 2022, their collective was celebrated by Russia’s largest animation festival: Vasiliy Chirkov’s A White White Day (2022) was named the year’s best Russian animated short, and the group’s experimental The Sky Has No Ends got a special nod “for the incredible visual experience.”3
That event opened in October, though. The war had broken out in February. Russian animation was already upside-down again; artists were already leaving in droves. The majority of Invisible Friends would go abroad — along with many, many others. They would build new lives as immigrants.
Today, Boguslavsky lives in the Armenian capital of Yerevan, with his wife Asya Kiseleva. They’ve been out of the Moscow scene for three years — and they’ve integrated into a different one. As he tells us:
The animation scene in the South Caucasus is quite small. We already were friends with some animators from Georgia, and very soon met Armenian animators who were incredibly helpful and welcoming. For example, Naira Muradyan, one of the most influential Armenian animators of today, invited a few of our animation friends, whom she hadn’t even met before, to stay at her house for several months!
The collective has shifted its classes to Yerevan and Tbilisi, Georgia. They fill a gap: Boguslavsky was surprised to find “no regular animation education” in Armenia, despite a few smaller courses by schools and studios. Work in education provides the team’s main income — things like workshops and teaching, and a multi-film series with Yerevan’s Folk Arts Museum (on traditional felting, embroidery, pottery).
“Still, it is a challenge, as local institutions aren’t too interested to collaborate, and the fee we have to charge is quite high for local students, and still not enough to cover all our needs,” Boguslavsky adds. “But we’re surviving.”
Yet there are upsides. He tells us of Armenia’s rich diversity: “different dialects in every town and village, thousands of hidden places, very different landscapes in that tiny area [and] delicious seasonal dishes” that vary regionally. Plus, it’s a six-hour drive between Yerevan and Tbilisi — the team used to travel much farther.
And that’s just the beginning. As Boguslavsky writes:
… everything in Armenia is of a human size, totally different from enormous Moscow. Houses, distances, speed (except for the style of driving). Almost everything is within walking distance, nobody is on the streets in a hurry, people have time to meet up and communicate. Almost every day I meet several people I know, Armenians as well as Russian immigrants. Many surprising moments when, for example, you meet your schoolmate you haven’t seen for ages, in totally different surroundings. Because of that, many Russians, especially those who have no travel documents, joke that we are in purgatory.
Warm and kind communication in Armenian culture is very important; they call strangers brothers, sisters, sons, etc. They always add a word jan to your name, which means “my soul.” Everyone really wants an answer for, “How are you?” If you stop on the street, somebody will come to you and ask, “Are you lost and do you need some help?” It is a huge contrast to Moscow, where nobody would stop even if you were dying [smile].
As the business of everyday life continues, work on Invisible Friends’ personal films is proceeding as it can in the background.
The team recently wrapped My Heart, a plasticine feature 15 years in the making. It’s set in Armenia, directed by Ilya Yudovich and based on the work of author William Saroyan. “It was half-done when we immigrated, and after getting funds [in Armenia] it took one year to finish the shooting. It was very fast and inspiring,” writes Boguslavsky. A local producer, Armine Harutyunyan, made that funding possible.
Talks are ongoing with other producers to get My Heart through post. In the meantime, more projects are underway. The collective’s Alexey Yermolaev is directing an animated doc about filmmaker Sergei Parajanov, for example, while Boguslavsky and Kiseleva are crowdfunding Maybe Yes, Maybe No (here) — an intriguing short that began at Soyuzmultfilm.
Life is messier, harder and more uncertain than it used to be, but Invisible Friends is holding on. Something is slowly taking shape in this animation diaspora, even at this early point, and even with Moscow’s funding and infrastructure out of reach.
During our exchange, we ask Boguslavsky for his advice to other artists dealing with disruption and chaos in the world. He tells us:
Remember: life first, then art.
Also, I’m quite sure that difficult circumstances make your art special. Sure, nobody should search for troubles and suffering to be a great artist. But, if you are already in trouble, it is good to remember that your art is probably becoming more interesting. And probably will cheer up somebody who needs it.
2 – Newsbits
It’s come to our attention that The Glassworker is streaming for free in Australia via SBS On Demand. The film (made in Pakistan) was one of last year’s best.
The American film Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse had its first preview this week. It also has a new release date: June 2027.
In Japan, director Megumi Ishitani (One Piece) expressed her views on those terrible, AI-generated “Ghibli-style” images spreading online. “I want legal action to be taken... I can’t stand seeing Ghibli treated so cheaply,” she wrote on Twitter.
After 65 straight days, Nezha 2 finally descended from the top of China’s box office. It’s earned some $2.1 billion worldwide now.
A Japanese classic, Hayao Miyazaki’s Future Boy Conan, will stream via RetroCrush starting this month.
In Europe, on the border between Italy and Slovenia, important talks took place last month. Namely, talks about a new fund meant to ease the tough development periods faced by European animated co-productions.
American animator John Pomeroy (The Secret of NIMH) is sharing his knowledge on YouTube. His latest video, out this past week, is about animating “the impacts seen in old-school cartoons.”
In Russia, camera operator Igor Skidan-Bosin received an honorary “Master” prize from the Ikar Awards. He shot Yuri Norstein’s Tale of Tales, worked on Garri Bardin’s Coiling Prankster and more.
The French feature Little Amélie is almost done — Cineuropa reports that it’s “in the final stages of post-production.” We’ve followed this one for years. A few months back, there was a teaser.
Last of all: we looked at a few gems from Uzbekistan (including There Will Come Soft Rains) — and at the lost moment in time that allowed them to exist.
Until next time!
Bien’s words come from a report published in this newsletter.
Boguslavsky’s quotes have been edited for length and clarity.
Thank you for sharing this (and everything else you share)! As an Armenian who grew up in Moscow, can confirm that the line about no-one bothering to stop if you were dying on the street is very true.
Really interesting article. Great to have a spotlight shone on these artists and their political situation and resilience.