‘Magic Atlas’ review: Chinese-language animation deploys multiple techniques to striking, confounding effect

Dir. Sun Xun. Singapore. 2026. 85mins

A magician piloting a flying machine strays into the airspace of the fictional kingdom of Luocha. It’s a realm governed by a repressive regime of humans and mule-headed animal overlords; the citizens – a mixture of people and assorted other creatures – live according to strict rules, one of which is that flying of any kind is strictly forbidden. The magician finds himself incarcerated; in jail, he meets a fellow prisoner, a young orphaned boy, with whom he strikes up a bond. And that’s about it, as far as the plot goes in this opaque, confounding but striking Chinese-language animation by Sun Xun.

Might seem more at home as a gallery installation than in a cinema

A project which took 10 years to complete and incorporates multiple contrasting animation techniques, Magic Atlas works less as a piece of narrative fiction than it does as a work of experimental conceptual video art. This is a film which might seem more at home as a gallery installation than in a cinema. It’s an impression that is further bolstered by end credits that thank Judith Neilson, the founder and director of the White Rabbit Gallery in Sydney, Australia; an institution which specialises in Chinese contemporary art and which has shown several of the director’s previous works. Having premiered in Locarno, Magic Atlas next plays DOK Leipzig and Tokyo; with little in the way of story to broaden its niche appeal, the film is likely to remain a festival curio which will be of particular interest to animation-savvy audiences. 

While it may not be entirely clear what is going on in the coal-mining principality of Luocha, what’s not in question is the extraordinary artistry employed by Sun and his huge crew of animators. Particularly striking – and, one imagines, extremely time-consuming – are the 2D animations crafted from carved wood-block ink prints. It’s a technique which is especially effective when the film turns its lens onto the natural world, with owls and hares captured against a backdrop of sculptural tree branches in handsome, stark, monochrome lines reminiscent of the engravings of the British mid-century artist Eric Ravilious.

Elsewhere in the film, in the Sino-steam-punk infused industrial heartland of Luocha, a magpie’s haul of other references come to mind. There’s a clear flavour of H.G. Wells throughout; a nod to the Medieval painter Pieter Bruegel’s famous depiction of the Tower of Babel;  a hint of Chinese artist Yue Minjun’s unnerving self-portraiture in the grotesque, grinning faces of the citizens of Luocha. There’s even, perhaps, a slight kinship with Hayao Miyazaki, a filmmaker whose fascination with rickety, implausible flying machines is well-documented throughout his body of work.

Beyond the wood-cut animation, there is a wide range of other techniques and media used. At times, it’s a little distracting, as though the lack of coherence in the storytelling is mirrored in the eclectic visual approach. The sparse monochrome gives way to a strident use of colour and some sequences which appear to have been rendered with felt tip pens.

But what of the magician and his young friend? It doesn’t look good for them, or indeed for any of the workers who are surveilled by mosquitos fitted with camera lenses during a special celebration – the Magic Dream Festival – which comes around once every sixty years. Those in power, cackling with exaggerated evil, plan to douse the entire population with amnesia powder at the height of the festivities. But, like so much else in this beautiful, frustrating picture, we have little idea why.