Moments after the announcement of the international-Israeli studio SIPUR on the production of I’m Still Alive, the best-selling author and social activist against organized crime Roberto Saviano won an award from the Council of Europe today at the Cartoon Movie conference held in France, one of the most significant conferences for animated content in the world. Along with the recognition and the expression of confidence in the production in which the international-Israeli studio SIPUR is involved, the award is a financial grant of 20,000 dollars to be used by the creators for the development of the film. His first feature film, the animated film called I’m Still Alive, based on a novel of the same name by Saviano and his co-writer and illustrator, Hugo Award nominee and Israeli Eisner Award winner Assaf Hanukah (realist, The Divine and animation artist in the Oscar-nominated Israeli film Waltz with Bashir ). The project is an international co-production between the Israeli studio SIPUR (“Eichmann: The Lost Recordings”, “Norman” by Joseph Cedar, Swiss Army Man by Daniels), MAD Entertainment and Lucky Red in Italy, and GapBusters from Belgium.
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I’m Still Alive is one of the nine nominees for the Euroimages Award for Co-Production Development that will be awarded in Bordeaux at the Cartoon Movie event (March 7-9). The film will deal with the life of Roberto, one of Italy’s most prominent and successful writers, and will tell how his life turned upside down after he published his book “Gomorrah” which reveals the depth of the influence of organized crime in Italy. After “Gomorrah” was published and became an international bestseller, the Italian mafia put out a contract on Sabiano’s life, when he was only 26 years old. Since then, for almost 20 years, he has been living in the dark, barely seeing sunlight and protected by special forces of the Italian police. The film will use an abstract and artistic animation style to depict Roberto’s memories, dreams and inner world, from childhood to the present day. Sabiano shared that, “My film is the story of a 26-year-old guy who was killed by a criminal organization – a boy who grew up in a country where, in just a few years, the Camorra killed 4,000 people. The sentence was imposed on the boy because he decided to write what he saw around him. Here . This child is me. I’m Still Alive is the film with which I decided to bring back to the screen what I had experienced until now.”