Zarafa

Inspired by the true story of the first giraffe to visit France, Zarafa is a sumptuously-animated and stirring adventure — a throwback to a bygone era of hand-drawn animation and epic storytelling set among sweeping vistas of parched desert, wind-swept mountains and open skies. Under the cover of night a small boy, Maki, loosens the shackles that bind him and escapes into the desert night. Pursued by slavers across the moon-lit savannah, Maki meets Zarafa, a baby giraffe — and an orphan, just like him — as well as the turbaned nomad Hassan, Prince of the Desert. Hassan takes them to Alexandria for an audience with the Pasha of Egypt, who orders him to deliver the exotic animal as a gift to King Charles of France. And so Maki, Zarafa and Hassan take off in a hot-air balloon to cross the Mediterranean — an unbelievably beautiful and adventure-filled ride through the pink-skied, honey-hued expanses of Northern Africa, the bustling port of Marseilles, and over the snow-capped peaks of the Alps, arriving at last in Paris. There the unimpressed French monarch (portrayed as a laughable, semi-grotesque, pasty-faced, inbred by the same character designer as The Triplets of Belleville) indifferently accepts the gift, but Maki is determined to return Zarafa back to his rightful home in Africa.