The Bears' Famous Invasion of Sicily (film)

The Bears' Famous Invasion of Sicily (La fameuse invasion des ours en Sicile; La famosa invasione degli orsi in Sicilia) is an upcoming French-Italian animated film directed by Lorenzo Mattotti. It is based on the children's book The Bears' Famous Invasion of Sicily by Dino Buzzati. It was selected to be screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival.

Production
The film is produced by the French company Prima Linea Productions. It is co-produced with Pathé and France 3 Cinéma in France and Indigo Films and Rai Cinema in Italy. It has a budget of eleven million euro. It received financial support from Canal+ and the CNC. It received 375,000 euro from the Ile-de-France region's Support Fund for Film and Audiovisual Technical Industries. The project also won the Gan Foundation's Special Prize for 2016.

The visual style is inspired by Buzzati's illustrations but also independent from the original book. The landscapes are inspired by real Mediterranean landscapes with liberties taken in order to create a fairytale-like atmosphere. Mattotti's ambition was to create a timeless visual style so that people who view the film in the future will not be able to see when it was made.

The film was in production in November 2016. In a November 2016 interview, Mattotti expected it to be released in two or three years.

Critical response
On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 100% based on 1 review.