‘Arco’ Director Ugo Bienvenu And ‘Flow’s’ Gints Zilbalodis Discuss The Craft Of Indie Animation (EXCLUSIVE VIDEO)

It’s rare to get to sit in on a conversation between two filmmakers at the peak of their craft. So, we’re thrilled to debut this conversation between Arco filmmaker Ugo Bienvenu and Oscar-winning Flow director Gints Zilbalodis.

Framed as a discussion about process rather than promotion, rare during awards season, the interview dives deeply into how Arco was conceived, shaped, and ultimately realized over five years of intense, hands-on teamwork.

Early on, Bienvenu makes it clear that his films begin visually, not narratively. “I have these thoughts, and they live inside me, and someday they mix and appear unconsciously through a picture. Then I have to understand why this picture is important to me,” he explains. “Figuring out why it’s important gives me the whole story.”

In Arco’s case, that moment arrived fully formed. “All these thoughts were aggregated into this one drawing of a face falling out of the sky with the colors behind him. When I did that, all of a sudden, the story came. It was kind of magic.”

He says that immediately after realizing that image, he quickly sketched 10-20 more drawings from the beginning, end, and core of the film, and “all my skeleton was there in like an afternoon,” followed by five years of refinement.

Much of the discussion centers on Bienvenu’s unconventional workflow: storyboarding for three years while his partner, Felix de Givry, translated the images into a script, then self-financing a feature-length animatic to secure funding. “We put out all our money and hired like three people… and we did the whole animatic,” he says. That upfront investment paid dividends later, because having such a detailed animatic allowed for full production to be completed in just over a year.

The interview also explores how Bienvenu preserved a handcrafted sensibility while scaling up to a 130-person team. “The hard path was to not go industrial,” he notes, insisting on proximity, daily in-person feedback, and maintaining a singular creative voice.

“When I see a movie, what I like is to hear a voice,” he explains of his own tastes. “Sometimes, I hear tons of voices screaming at the same time. So many decisions that don’t seem to come from just one person, so you’re stuck in a lot of noise.”

The goal, then, was to make sure that his voice was the one that audiences would hear when watching Arco.

Zilbalodis’s well-prepared, craft-focused questions keep the conversation grounded, touching also on performance, sound design, and music. For anyone curious about the creative process behind one of this year’s awards season favorites, the video is a must-watch.