Hamburg animated film at the Sundance Film Festival

17.01.2023 | Premiere "The Amazing Maurice the Cat"

Hamburg-based production company Ulysses Films will be showing its animated film "The Amazing Maurice the Cat" at the renowned Sundance Film Festival in the USA from 19 January. The Terry Pratchett adaptation will be one of only three films to be shown in the children's section. Bastian Pastewka lends his voice to the orange-coloured street cat in the German version - cinema release is 9 February 2023.

Helge AlbersCEO of MOIN Film Fund: "The festival year for Film-Norden is starting with a bang! With the premiere at Sundance, Hamburg-based Executive Producer Emely Christians and her team from Ulysses Films are showing what is possible in our region. With 'The Amazing Maurice the Cat', they have created an animated film that doesn't need to shy away from international comparison and skilfully captures the magic of the Pratchett novels. The premiere at Sundance is now the well-deserved icing on the cake."

About "The Amazing Maurice the Cat" The film is about the enterprising tomcat The Amazing Maurice, who travels the Discworld with a troop of clever rats and, together with a piper, robs the townsfolk of their money. A story based on the Pied Piper of Hamelin by the late novelist Terry Pratchett and set in the fictitious town of Bad Blintz in the Black Forest. The script was written by US-American Terry Rossio, who also worked on the scripts for "Pirates of the Caribbean" and "Shrek". Directors was Toby Genkel, with whom the Hamburg production company Ulysses Films has already produced cinema films such as "Ooops! Die Arche ist weg..." and "Überflieger". Over the course of two years, more than 250 people in the UK and Germany worked on "The Amazing Maurice the Cat". In Hamburg, Studio Rakete, which has been working with Ulysses Films since it was founded in 2005 and is based in the same office building in Hamburg Altona, was responsible for the animation work. The co-producer is the UK company Cantilever Media. In the German version, Maurice is voiced by Bastian Pastewka, while Hamburg HMS graduate Jerry Hoffmann has taken on the role of Keith (the flute player).

"The Amazing Maurice the Cat" will celebrate its North American premiere at the Sundance Film Festival 2023, while the animated film had its UK premiere at the Manchester Animation Festival in September 2022. "The Amazing Maurice the Puss" was supported by the MOIN Film Fund with a total of 840,000 euros.