Film

Song of the Sea

Name: Song of the Sea
Genre: Family, Animation, Fantasy
Released: 2014
Cast: David Rawle, Brendan Gleeson, Lisa Hannigan, Fionnula Flanagan, Lucy O'Connell

Song of the Sea is Cartoon Saloon's hand-painted fable about a boy and his silent little sister who turn out to be the last of the selkies, pursued by an owl-witch through a flattened, watercolour Ireland. It moves at a lullaby's pace, the folklore feels older than the film itself, and Bruno Coulais's score does as much storytelling as the dialogue. Beautiful, sad, gentle — for kids who like myths and adults who don't mind being quietly wrecked.

TMDb rating

8.0

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Both are animated films that refuse to soften folklore's teeth for children; this one shows how much further that same instinct can go into darkness.

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Kubo and the Two Strings2016

Stop-motion instead of paint, but the same engine underneath: a child, an absent mother, a journey stitched from folk tale and grief, built with astonishing tactile craft.

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The Red Turtle2016

A Studio Ghibli co-production with no dialogue at all — a castaway fable told purely through image and rhythm, as patient and melancholy as Song of the Sea at its quietest.

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Pixar's take on folklore, death and family memory, just as unafraid to make children cry, with music doing the same emotional heavy lifting Coulais's score does here.

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Mexican folklore rendered as wooden-figure fantasia, colourful and strange, tackling death and family duty with the same fairy-tale directness.

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Two sisters, a half-glimpsed magical world, a missing parent hovering in the background — Miyazaki's gentlest film, and the clearest ancestor of this one's tone.

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The Iron Giant1999

Old-school hand-drawn animation with a huge, aching heart, about a strange arrival, a child who understands what adults don't, and a sacrifice that still lands hard.

But American and Cold War-flavoured rather than folkloric — the myth here is science fiction, not fairy tale.

The Secret of Roan Inish1994no page yet

Draws on the identical Irish selkie folklore as Song of the Sea, but proves the myth works just as well without a single drawn frame.

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