ABOUT THE PROJECT
LOGLINE
Based on Werner Herzog’s best selling novel, THE TWILIGHT WORLD tells the true story of Hiroo Onoda, a World War II Japanese intelligence officer who refused to surrender and continued to fight a personal, fictitious war in the jungles of the Philippines. For thirty years. Part fictionalized history, part drama and part dream log, the film is a meditation on the nature of reality, the illusion of time, and the conflict between the external world and our inner lives.
SYNOPSIS
THE TWILIGHT WORLD will be Werner Herzog’s first animated feature film.
Towards the end of the second World War, second lieutenant of the Japanese Imperial Army Hiroo Onoda was ordered to defend Lubang Island in the Philippines against the encroaching American Army by using guerilla tactics after the Japanese army had abandoned the island. Despite multiple communications from the Japanese army after their defeat and other mounting pieces of evidence that the war was over, Onoda continued to fight on the island for nearly three decades after the war ended, until 1974.
He was finally persuaded to surrender after his former commanding officer was flown in to see him.
We explore Onoda’s fanatical and unyielding dedication to his mission in the face of mounting facts of the end of the war as well as the deaths of two of his comrades—deaths that could have been avoided if he had chosen to surrender.
THE TWILIGHT WORLD takes a deeply imaginative approach to the passage of time. Time in the jungle is unshackled from the objective ticking of the ubiquitous clocks found in civilization. It stays still for weeks and then suddenly leaps forward dissolving months into moments. As the film marches ahead we become immersed in Onoda’s quixotic crusade and time turns into an increasingly subjective occurrence.
THE TWILIGHT WORLD is a French/German co-production between world renowned animation studio Psyop (Germany/USA), and Sun Creature Studios (France/Denmark), producers of the Bafta- and Oscar-nominated film, Flee.
PROJECT TYPE Narrative Feature
DIRECTOR Werner Herzog
SCREENWRITER Michael Arias, Luca Vitale
PRODUCER Amanda Miller, Andrew Linsk, Charlotte Delagournerie, Emmanuel Bernard
WEBSITE psyop.com
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