(Status: In Development)
Synopsis
1889. Having come to France as part of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show Tour for the Paris World Fair, Rahimé Valladier, known as the Mexican, sets off in search of the Holy Spirit, a treasure supposedly left behind by his ancestors, Protestants from the Cévennes who had fled Catholic repression following the revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685). Back on his ancestral land, and despite the new-found freedom of religion, he discovered the Cévennes people’s struggle to survive: after the boom in silkworms and mining, the Cévennes became impoverished from the mid-19th century onwards. At the same time, a law imposed the French language on schools, to the detriment of Occitan. A culture was dying.
Désert
Director, Graphic Author: Aurel
Author: Jean-Louis Milesi
Main Producer: Serge Lalou (Les Films d’Ici Méditerranée, France)
Co-Producer: Matthieu Liégeois (Tchack, France)
Target audience: Young Adults / Adults
Technique: 2D digital / Drawing
Format: 80’
Aurel, Jean-Louis Milesi, and Serge Lalou, the respective director, writer, and producer of the multi-award-winning Josep (2020), have teamed up again for a new animated feature film project, Désert. The team behind the project revealed key parts of the film’s story and some visual materials at Cartoon Movie 2025.
Here, we share the latest information on the intriguing film project Désert in the words of the three key figures.
Interview with Aurel, Jean-Louis Milesi, and Serge Lalou
Hideki Nagaishi (HN): Could you please let us know the film’s story, in brief?
Jean-Louis Milesi: 1889. Coming to France as part of the ‘Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show Tour,’ Santiago Roumejon sets out in search of the Holy Spirit, a treasure that his Protestant ancestors from the Cévennes are said to have left behind when they were driven out by the Catholic repression of 1685.
HN: What kind of message or experience do you most want to deliver to the audience through the film?
Aurel: It’s difficult to talk about a ‘message’ for the public. It’s possibly information they don’t have that we would like to deliver, but in no case a message. We’re not here for that. We’re telling a story that, through the lives of its characters, describes a moment in history. So, it’s above all a human story that takes place at the end of the 19th century, in a very remote part of France whose culture is gradually disappearing for a whole host of reasons that are beyond these people.
Jean-Louis Milesi: To respect the history of France and the history of the repression of Protestants, to share the daily life of a few people, all while never forgetting the audience’s pleasure, and surprising and transporting them into a Western world.
HN: How did this film project start?
Serge Lalou: After the adventure of Josep, Aurel came to me with a new idea that immediately resonated—both artistically and personally. We share a deep affection for the Cévennes, a place of rugged beauty and complex history, and Désert was born from that shared connection.
The starting point was Aurel’s desire to draw a line between two seemingly distant worlds: the Wild West and the Cévennes at the end of the 19th century. The figure of a Mexican cowboy, a descendant of Huguenots exiled during the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, returning to France in search of a forgotten legacy, offered a powerful way to explore themes of exile, identity, and cultural erasure.
Like Josep and Désert is both rooted in a real historical context and carried by a strong visual and poetic ambition. It’s a political and aesthetic project that places drawing—and language—at the heart of its storytelling. And for both of us, it’s also a way to bring back to life the voices of the invisible and the forgotten, from the bottom up.
HN: Where did the initial idea of the film’s story come from?
Jean-Louis Milesi: The initial idea came from Aurel. Less of a global concept, it was above all a place—the Cévennes; an era—the end of the 19th century when France imposed its official language to the detriment of other languages; and a few characters.
HN: What are you taking care in the most during the film’s story development so far?
Aurel: What is most important to me is, first of all, the writing. As with Josep, I delivered an overall idea, a desire, intentions, places, and characters to Jean-Louis; we discussed a lot, and I let him take and lead. Then, on the graphic and formal level of the film, I move forward with all the dimensions simultaneously. I can’t imagine developing the graphics without knowing the voices and the music of the film. So, I move forward with everything at the same time. On the graphics, I’m sticking to the course of a pure black and white film to focus on expressiveness and be as close as possible to pure drawing, and look towards abstraction.
Jean-Louis Milesi: Writing an adventure movie.
HN: Could you please let us know the key points of the character and environment design of this film? What are the important characteristics and goals of the visuals for the film?
Aurel: Besides the black and white bias, the film has at least one other particularity: the characters will have the features (drawn in my own way) of the actors and actresses who lend them their voices. This is a way for me to push it even further and involve the actors and actresses more deeply in the character. They will behave like those who lend them their voices. Furthermore, we are currently working on the entire visual part by developing a 3-minute pilot. The main difficulties come precisely from the black and white, from prohibiting ourselves from tools (colour, gray) while maintaining the understanding of the image.
HN: What do you think is the biggest creative challenge for you in this film project so far?
Aurel: In light of what I described earlier, it is about maintaining the film’s graphic requirements while retaining a mainstream character and not tiring the viewer.
Jean-Louis Milesi: To reveal in an entertaining way a little-known moment in French history.
