‘Somewhere With A Soul Where Memories Could Be Made’: Building ‘Arco’s’ Oscar-Nominated Studio By Hand

Ugo Bienvenu’s Arco has been a key awards player since its highly lauded world premiere at Cannes and its Cristal for Best Feature win at Annecy, all the way through its Annie win for best independent feature last weekend.

It can be a real challenge to keep finding new ways to cover films like Arco, which debut early in the year and continue to gather momentum deep into awards season. Today, we’re taking a different approach with an exclusive video that takes us behind the scenes to something far more grounded: the physical space where Arco was made.

As a hand-crafted, director-driven animated feature produced outside the traditional studio system, Arco was always going to reflect the sensibilities of its makers. That ethos extended beyond the screen and into the production itself. Rather than renting a standard office, the team at Remembers settled on a modest house with a quaint yard in Paris.

“One day, we found this house with a small garden, where it didn’t feel like just a workspace,” the team recalls in the video. The goal was clear from the start: to build a place that felt human. “We always wanted the studio to feel lived in… not like some generic, cold space but somewhere with a soul where memories could be made.”

The Remembers team bought wood and built their own tables, shaping a studio that evolved alongside the film. When COVID hit, and production ramped up, the house adapted again. “We needed somewhere bigger than we needed back then,” they explain, prompting the addition of a small screening room downstairs where animatics could be watched and discussed collectively. “There was a plan. I knew this studio was where we’d make Arco, or at least a feature film.”

The home-like layout also reinforced collaboration. With the ability to fit four or five workstations into each room, small teams worked in close proximity, sharing space with people they genuinely enjoyed. “That really shaped the overall vibe of the place,” the team notes, “and of the film, too.” For a hopeful, future-facing story like Arco, that sense of intimacy and care became part of the animation’s DNA.