Dream Teams: The Ingredients that Go into Milli’s Poetic, Cinematic Animation

Known as the ‘Ville de l’Image’ or ‘City of the Image,’ Angoulême in southwestern France hosts a disproportionate number of animation and video game studios that produce a significant amount of France’s animated production. It’s second only to Paris as a centre for the craft. So Vic Chhun and Leyla Kaddoura chose well when they decided to attend the EMCA (Ecole des Métiers du Cinéma d'Animation) school for animation there. The pair, who now work together as directing duo Milli, met there in the same class. 

Vic enjoyed working with Leyla. “She’s very discreet, but with positive energy. This hasn't changed.”

Leyla got a similar vibe off Vic. “When I first met him he was very inconspicuous and quiet, always very focused on his work. Now he is always joking, goofing around, making a big effort so the junior folks on our team feel at ease and integrated within the team. The ‘focus on work’ hasn't changed, I guess!”

Although they were both students, the pair soon built a relationship where they relied on each other. “Vic was my mentor in animation in school,” says Leyla. “I have a tendency to trust my feelings and Vic helped me be more disciplined and more technically precise.”

A similar lesson seems to have gone both ways. “I have a tendency to get all stirred up on the projects. Leyla taught me to take it in stride, I learned patience and calmness from her,” says Vic.

They first joined forces while still studying, to work on a short film for Canal J – a children’s TV channel that the school had a relationship with. “We wanted to try a project just the two of us together,” says Leyla. “Things went extremely well, the organisation was very fluid and the exchange was very dynamic. We complemented each other and enriched each other's concepts. Both of us felt very naturally comfortable in this duo.” 

That laid the groundwork for Vic and Leyla to start working together regularly. Although they didn’t officially become Milli straight away, soon after graduation they often happened to work on the same production in various studios. 

“In the world of commercials, recruitment happens by word of mouth, so we’d recommend each other for the team,” recalls Vic.

Vic and Leyla’s first professional production directing together was a striking film for the WWF, in which a metaphor for ecological destruction is laid out plainly, with Earth literally bleeding. “The production went very smoothly. It was our first professional production and looking back, it was also a non-official production as the duo Milli,” says Vic.

 

Wizz, the Parisian animation company that now represents the duo, had offered for Leyla to direct it alone, “but I felt I needed Vic's contribution,” she says. “We started working together as we had done in previous projects, eventually joining Wizz as a duo.”

Vic admires what his counterpart brings to their projects. “Leyla has a way of cheering up every frame with her personal colourful palettes and poetic concepts,” he says, while Leyla appreciates the way that “Vic reinforces our creations technically and stages them in a cinematic way.”

Like any partnership, one of the pair might sometimes cling too hard to their interpretation of an idea and they might get into an argument. “But quickly we overcome our stubbornness and start all over, putting aside our egos and reconsidering the good of the project,” says Leyla. “We always let the quality of the project supersede our personal choices. But most of the time we are on the same wavelength.”

Having each worked alone, being in a partnership like Milli has strengths that they see plainly. “Working as a duo allows for better constructed concepts,” says Vic. “You build hindsight that allows for the maturation of any idea. Also it allows you to share responsibilities when things become too difficult.”

Working in advertising animation, those difficulties abound, especially when a client struggles to put into words what they want or what they don’t like. That means Milli end up in situations where they need to present several different ideas in an extremely short period of time. “This is really tricky when you are working alone,” says Leyla.

Being surrounded by the community of their production company gives Vic and Leyla another mode of cross fertilisation. “We have learned tremendous amounts from working with the other directors at Wizz,” says Vic. “Their invaluable experiences inspire us as does every new idea in the world of animation and every different style in this very rich artistic domain.”

Outside of the community of Wizz and as All of Us Here, who represent them in the UK, both halves of Milli can often be found outside the limits of Paris and away from their screens hiking with friends, or hunkered down for a game night. These influences are sure to emerge in their films sometime, so keep up to date with their work.