I'm going round a world map finding things to watch from small countries and 'Battledream Chronicle' from the island of Martinique, and specifically creator Alain Bidard, is an absolutely wonderful animated film, dressed up as a futuristic science-fiction story but with its clever politics of slavery and colonialism rooted in the past.
It's not a film that bashes you over the head with said politics so it is easily enjoyed as just a sci-fi/fantasy (the reason I picked it to watch) and the animation style reminds me heavily of cartoons and animated series I watched as a child in the 1970's.
Bidard created this by himself from scratch, wrote the score, edited, directed, wrote the script and voiced many of the characters and it is a testament to his stubbornness that he managed it, because there is no animation studio in Martinique, hell there isn't much of a film industry at all so he deserves much credit.
I was fully invested in the story from the off and I'm not the biggest animation fan. It's not perfect but the interesting story and so many hours of blood, sweat and tears put into creating it oozes out of the screen.
I'm not sure how many films Alain Bidard has made but I'm going to find out and watch anything else he may have created.
