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Dragon production: Award-winning Sino-Spanish animation takes flight

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Content is automatically generated by Microsoft Azure Translator Text API. CGTN is not responsible for any of the translations.

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Dragonkeeper is a feature-length animated movie that tells the story of enslaved orphan girl Ping, who holds the destiny of the last of China's ancient dragons in her hands.

Starring Bill Nighy, Bill Bailey, Anthony Howell and Mayalinee Griffiths, it has already won China's Golden Rooster – known as the 'Chinese Oscars' – and is up for three Goyas, Spain's film awards.

In Madrid, executive producer Larry Levene picked up another gong - this one presented to him by Catedra China, a Spanish organization that aims at bringing China and Spain a little bit closer.

Costing close to $30 million, the film took six years to make and had two directors - Salvador Simo and Li Jianping.

"It wasn't just two directors - we had two directors, two screenwriters, two VFX supervisors," Levene told CGTN in Madrid. "All of the chief supervision departments were both Chinese and Spanish. 

"So you need to find the values that we share. That was the challenge, and that was a success, because we made the film. The film is successful. And one of the biggest surprises in China is it being released in more than 30 countries up to now. So it's a success."

Larry Levene with his Catedra China award. /CGTN
Larry Levene with his Catedra China award. /CGTN

Larry Levene with his Catedra China award. /CGTN

China's ambassador to Spain, Yao Jing, was also present at the awards ceremony in Madrid, and hinted that Dragonkeeper isn't just a one-off with more co-productions already in the works.

"Right now we are discussing with the Spanish government for a new movie cooperation agreement to be finalized within this year," he said.

"Hopefully there are several aspects to this, for example, the joint production of films, documentaries and other stories. Second, we will purchase more Spanish movies, because Spain produces excellent movies globally. Third, we want to encourage more participation of the movies in Chinese festivals.

"And then finally we will encourage directors, producers, technicians, performers, through skill-based training, to learn from each other. So this is, I think, our area of movie cooperation, but it's only one aspect of the cultural cooperation between China and Spain.

"This demonstrates that we are determined to move forward, to explore more areas and to also have a closer collaboration in the cultural sector."

The awards keep coming for Dragonkeeper, and may just be the beginning of a blockbuster partnership that's off to a flying start.

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