The animated feature film ‘Dragonkeeper (Guardiana de dragones)’, directed by Salvador Simó and Li Jianping, opened this Friday the Official Section of the 27th Malaga Festival, in which it will compete along with 18 more Spanish and Ibero-American films.

It is a Spanish-Chinese adventure and fantasy co-production based on the first of the six novels of the homonymous saga by Carole Wilkinson. She also co-wrote the screenwriting of this film adaptation with Pablo Castrillo, Ignacio Ferreas, Rosanna Checchini, and Wag Xianping.

At a press conference, Simó highlighted that with this film, he wanted to bring back the adventure storytelling of the 80s and 90s. ‘Those stories with which we grew up, such as the Goonies or Indiana Jones, and all those films that we came out of the cinema really excited about'.

Simó pointed out that, despite being an adaptation of an Australian book, the story takes place in China, specifically in a China 2,500 years ago, during the Han dynasty.  For this reason, it was clear to him and his producer, Larry Levene, that they had to approach it in the form of a Spanish-Chinese co-production. They wanted the story to be as faithful as possible to the historical context, to the essence and Japanese culture, so that the film would work both there and in the rest of the world.

‘When you’re telling a story, you shouldn’t just tell an adventure, but also you must tell something. In this case, the characters are the ones who go on an emotional journey to tell us that we can all write our own destiny. It is up to us to choose how we want to do it’. That’s how the filmmaker summed up the message that remains inherent to the screenwriting.

Abraham López is the animation director and Víctor Saúco, the 3D technical director. Both also stressed that the technical work was very hard and complex and described the experience as if it were a slow-motion shooting, in which every gesture was carefully studied. In fact, each gesture of the characters created a very intense and rewarding philosophical debate, but it was also exhausting,' confessed López.  Simó emphasised that both worked as if they were the actors in this film.

The director, Salvador Simó, competed at the Malaga Festival with his debut film Buñuel en el laberinto de las tortugas, for which he won the Goya for best animated film and the Biznaga Award for best soundtrack, composed by Arturo Cardelús. The musician is also in charge of the soundtrack for 'Dragonkeeper (Guardiana de dragones)’ and explained that the musical creation process took almost six months. In composing the songs, he has tried to adapt to the fragility of the character.

Cardelús has stated that the main character is a girl with powers, with a lot of light and charisma, but she is far from superheroes. And under this premise, he has composed the soundtrack, a melody that shows this fragility, but capable of adapting to the heroic scenes of the film.

‘Dragonkeeper (Guardiana de dragones)’ invites the audience to immerse themselves in a complicated era during imperial China, in which dragons go from being friends and wise allies of human beings to being haunted and imprisoned in dungeons.

In a remote mountain stronghold, a young girl helps the last of the dragons escape. She joins him on a mission to recover the most precious treasure: the last dragon egg, which has been stolen by an evil wizard who wants to use its magic potential to obtain immortality.

On the other hand, the producer, Larry Levene, has announced that 'Dragonkeeper' is the first of a trilogy, so they will start working on the second and third films not long from now. The film is scheduled for release in cinemas on the 5th of April in the United States and on the 19th of April in Spain. The film has a budget of 24 million euros.