The Red Turtle

The Red Turtle is a 2016 animated fantasy drama film directed by Dutch animator Michaël Dudok de Wit who co-wrote the film with French screenwriter Pascale Ferran. The film is an international co-production between Studio Ghibli and several French companies, including Wild Bunch and Belvision. The film, which has no dialogue, tells the story of a man who becomes shipwrecked on an uninhabited island and meets a giant red female turtle. The film premiered in the Un Certain Regard section at the 69th Cannes Film Festival on 18 May 2016. The film was nominated for the Best Animated Feature Film for the 89th Academy Awards. Plot A man set adrift by a storm wakes up on a beach. He discovers that he is on an uninhabited island with plenty of fresh water, fruit, and a dense bamboo forest. It is dominated by a smooth rock hill. After a few nights he begins to hallucinate, firstly seeing a string quartet playing on the beach. He builds a raft from bamboo and attempts to sail away, but his raft is destroyed by an unseen creature in the sea, forcing him back to the island. He tries again with a larger raft, but is again foiled by the creature. A third attempt ends with the raft destroyed, but this time he is confronted by a giant sea turtle with a bright red shell. That evening, the man sees the red turtle crawling up the beach. In anger, he hits it on the head with a bamboo stick, then flips it over onto its back, stranding it. While working on another raft, he feels remorse and returns to the turtle but it is too heavy for him to flip over. He fetches water for it, but when he returns, it is dead. He falls asleep next to it. In the morning, the man is surprised to find a red-haired woman lying unconscious inside the shell, which has split. He fetches water for her and builds a shelter to protect her from the sun. When rain hits, the woman wakes up and goes swimming. The woman casts the shell adrift on the sea and the man does the same to his raft. The two fall in love.