CEEA Talks: Giovanna Ferrari about ÉIRU: “We shouldn’t waste it on things that do not matter”

ÉIRU, by Giovanna Ferrari, takes you to the mythical landscape of Iron Age Ireland. Powerful clans, locked in conflict, provide an ideal setting for an animated short film in fiery colours, set against a foreboding darkness. And let’s be honest… You don’t see a muscleman walking around with an anvil on his head every day!

One day, the village well runs dry, and an important task is entrusted to the young girl Éiru. When she descends into the empty well, the villagers place their fate in her hands. But what she discovers at the bottom has far-reaching consequences for the entire community.

Ferrari, making her directorial debut with ÉIRU, builds on her experience as a storyboard artist. Since 2014, she has worked at the Irish Cartoon Saloon Studio as Head of Story. The personal voice she brings to ÉIRU fits seamlessly – both visually and thematically – within the Cartoon Saloon tradition: poetic tales about strong young girls, set against a backdrop of mythology and folklore. She spoke about this as a lecturer at CEE’s Animation Workshop in Łódź.

Giovanna Ferrari: Not long before I started to write ÉIRU, Russia had invaded Ukraine. There was this feeling of being in a moment when history’s pendulum was on the cusp of swinging back from a world of cooperation to a world of domination and violence. In all of Europe, we started to identify ourselves again through hating ‘the other’. First, we define the others, then put them in a box, and hate them. In all this commotion, we completely forgot about mankind’s most urgent problem… Climate change doesn’t make a distinction between you and the other; we’re all in for it, but we’re too busy hating the others to fix the real problem. This prompted me to make this movie, giving a way to think collectively about positive things we could do to make a small change. When I started working on ÉIRU, I hoped that the movie would have become obsolete by the time it was done. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen; conflicts around the globe have expanded, and climate change is still just an afterthought for many administrations.

If you were to ask people in the cinema what the main topic of ÉIRU is, I would be surprised if the majority of them answered ‘climate change’.

Ferrari: Because you cannot view ecology separately from the exploitation of minorities, sexism, discrimination, or respect for the Earth. You cannot define one without the other; they’re all intertwined.

The story takes us back to the heyday of the clans. Do Anglo-Saxon people still identify themselves with that image of the mighty warriors they once were?

Ferrari: They probably don’t identify themselves with the image of a bearded guy, wearing an anvil on his head, but they do strongly identify themselves as Irish. There is a deep sense of belonging to the land, which I find beautiful, but that can easily be exploited to associate discontent, housing crisis, and economic struggle with the idea of “the other”, rather than reflecting on our own responsibilities and achievable solutions.

Everybody watching ÉIRU has the same question: What’s at the bottom of the pit?

Ferrari: Éiru’s descent into the bowels of the earth is not just a narrative journey; it’s also imaginative. At the bottom of the pit, she finds a connective tissue between the land and the people, between humanity and nature, between the past and the present. There is the spirit of nature, which is a feminine, nurturing spirit, like the ancient goddess Bridget. Going down the well was very much a way of bringing that goddess to life.

Who is this Bridget?

Ferrari: A goddess that has survived for many centuries. She was so hugely important in Irish mythology that Christianity couldn’t erase her and made a saint of her, Saint Brigid of Kildare. Even nowadays, people believe in Bridget more than they believe in anything else. She is the goddess of fire, water, healing, and poetry, but also of forge and war. Bridget is omnipresent, in the water in ‘healing wells’, in the forces of nature, in the trees where people hang pieces of cloth to beg for healing. There’s a lot of that in the movie, although it might not appear clearly to anyone who’s not Irish. Bridget is also a goddess of justice towards minorities and the oppressed. That is why she encourages Éiru to listen to the stories, to the voices from the past, coming from victims of violence.

Because violence in Ireland has hit particularly hard?

Ferrari: In Ireland, recently, there has been a huge reckoning going on about all the things that have been done to women and children, all the systematic violence and abuse practiced by the church and the state. This reckoning helped Ireland to make a giant leap forward in terms of civil rights. Many progressive laws were implemented because of this. It wasn’t a walk in the park; it shattered lives and families, when people finally started talking about abuses, or about being taken away to the Magdalene Laundries with their babies. But you can’t look forward if you don’t first confront your past.

You witnessed this as an Italian coming to live in Ireland.

Ferrari: Today, I am a naturalized Irish citizen, as well as Italian. I don’t feel 100 per cent Italian, I don’t feel 100 per cent Irish, but since I first set foot on Irish soil, I’ve found a lot of kinship with the Irish. Italians and Irish people have much in common, like a certain sense of rhythm to life, a love for the landscape, a profound sense of belonging to the earth, and a similar perception of motherhood; Italian and Irish mothers are very similar characters. And there’s the music! I grew up surrounded by people singing and playing music in bars, and I found a similar spontaneous, sensorial attachment to music in Dublin. Both in Ireland and Italy, people just sing for the love of it.

You went there to work for Cartoon Saloon?

Ferrari: I am proud to have been part of the studio for ten years, and even before that, I was already working with them; the first time was on SONG OF THE SEA.

Cartoon Saloon has a clear visual and thematic identity. How did it feel to stick to that line in your own project, ÉIRU?

Ferrari: The studio’s entity is created by the people who are working there. The artists who worked on WOLFWALKERS and THE BREADWINNER are all moving in a certain direction. And this style came out exactly like I wanted it to be for ÉIRU. The folklore, the ecological concern, putting Bridget into the mix,… Such things are very Cartoon Saloonish. All the way throughout the genesis of the movie, I genuinely wanted to make a Cartoon Saloon film! I can’t imagine myself wandering too far away from that style, because that’s the direction I tend to go in myself.

Thematically or visually?

Ferrari: You can call it a philosophy. The less you have to think about, the better you can do the things you’re doing. I have a passion for simplifying things as much as possible; I don’t think there’s anything that can be too simple. Like many artists, I like constraints. It’s comfortable to know that there are certain limits; without constraints, I can’t create. And another thing that I share with the team is the idea that getting the opportunity to make a film is so rare and amazing that we shouldn’t waste it on things that do not matter. Especially not in times when there are so many important things to do and say.

Your main characters belong to the Clan of Fire. Because they were visually more appealing than the Clan of Trees and the Clan of Rock?

Ferrari: Bridget is the goddess of fire! You can use fire and flames for good or bad purposes; you can craft tools or weapons. You can use it to construct or to destroy. You can warm yourself or kill somebody with it. Moreover, the flames create a stunning contrast with the water.

Even though red is a difficult colour to handle!

Ferrari: Red is a bitch! It’s a very intense colour that can easily go wrong in every possible pigment. Which you’ll discover when you accidentally wash a red item with white laundry. There’s a new generation of designers that is almost reluctant to use red. I wanted a super clear, flashy red, but sometimes it was difficult to distinguish the exact correct gradation on the monitor.

Is WOLFWALKERS the film that most closely resembles ÉIRU?

Ferrari: I was indeed the storyboard artist for that movie, but ÉIRU has a tenderness to it that you will recognise in SONG OF THE SEA. That film was more floaty and magical; some parts in SONG OF THE SEA are really detached from reality, which is what I love best.

Was there a big team working on ÉIRU?

Ferrari: There were a lot of people, but never together at the same time. Many people were spending some time with us before moving on to the next film. The entire idea behind making a short film was to get people to enjoy the work instead of jumping from one hard production to another. A short film is more easygoing; at the end of the day, it has less anxiety attached. The team was usually tiny; we all fit in one room, which was a joy!

There’s a cinema waiting for you, which you can fill with your perfect audience. Who would be sitting inside?

Ferrari: Anyone who likes movies like SONG OF THE SEA, or PRINCESS MONONOKE. And I’d love to bring together old and young people, and then listen to what they would discuss afterwards. That’s one of the reasons for making this film.

Interview conducted by Gert Hermans for CEE Animation.