Wildcard Distrbution has partnered with Still Films to release hybrid animation-documentary ‘Last Hijack’ to Irish cinemas on January 8th, 2016.
Produced by the Submarine Channel, co-produced by Still Films in Ireland with funding from the Irish Film Board, the film this year won a Digital Emmy Award for Best Non Fiction production.
‘Last Hijack’ Interactive is an online documentary, allowing the viewer to experience the hijack of a ship in Somali waters, switching at will between the perspective of the Somali pirate and the English captain who is kidnapped.
‘Last Hijack’ consists of a film and an online production, directed by Femke Wolting and Tommy Pallotta. The film premiered at the Berlinale earlier this year and has been shown at festivals all over the world. This Submarine production is now being shown in the United States, both in cinemas and on iTunes, Netflix and many other Video on Demand platforms. The online documentary has already won international awards, including the Prix Europa.
Nicky Gogan and Caroline Campbell from Still Films produced the animation for the documentary with Gavin Kelly and the animators at Piranha Bar, using a bespoke technique developed with Tommy Pallotta over a number of months. The team brought actual oil paintings on canvas by artist Hisko Hulsing (Montage of Heck) and illustrations by Aaron Sacco (A Scanner Darkly), into a software pipeline that involved 2D, 3D and sophisticated compositing.
‘Last Hijack’ is an international co-production by Submarine in co-production with Still Films (Ireland), Razor Film (Germany), Savage Film (Belgium), IKON (The Netherlands) and ZDF (Germany). The film was made possible by funding from The Irish Film Board, the Media Programme of the European Union, Netherlands Film Fund, CoBO, Film- und Medienstiftung NRW, the Dutch Media Fund and the Flanders Audiovisual Fund.