Animated 3D film with Inuit characters to premiere in 2012

Here’s an image from Sarila, a 3D animated film, with Inuit characters and set in the Arctic, which is due to be released in 2012. (IMAGE/10avePRODUCTIONS)

Get your 3D glasses ready: a made-in-Canada 3D animated film, set in the Arctic and featuring Inuit characters, is in production.

“Sarila” tells the story of a voyage of initiation in which three young Inuit search for a promised land, hoping to save their people from famine, says the film’s website.

It’s also the story of a fight to the death between two shamans, the young Markussi and the aged Killiq, who feels that his power is threatened, it says.

Award-winning Igloolik actor Natar Ungalak, Christopher Plummer — the famed Canadian actor who also starred in “The Sound of Music,” Geneviève Bujold and Rachelle Lefevre are among the cast of voice actors for “Sarila,” which is promoted as the first feature-length stereoscopic animated film created in Canada.

Stereoscopic 3D refers to a method of creating 3D film by using two 2D images.

Directed by Nancy Florence Savard and due out in 2012, “Sarila” was written by children’s author Roger Harvey and Pierre Tremblay.

The producers say it uses authentic settings and indigenous mythology, including Inuit legends.

“Sarila invites the use of stereo 3D,” director Savard said in a recent news release from Productions 10e ave, Quebec-based digital film and television production company. “The characters travel across the tundra, through snowstorms, and meet strange, semi-mythical characters along the way. The immersive quality of the stereo 3D draws the audience into their odyssey.”

The action takes place in the North during the autumn of 1910, when an Inuit camp is threatened by famine, the news release said.

Day after day, the hunters return empty-handed. The aged shaman, Croolik, is unable to solve the problem. The camp’s wise woman, Saya, recalls the legend of Sarila, a promised land hidden among the glaciers, where wild game is said to be plentiful. “Legend has it that only those with pure hearts may enter this hallowed place,” the film’s website said.

Modus FX, a Montreal-based visual effects and animation company, has a team of 85 artists on the project.

Distributed by Alliance Vivafilm, “Sarila” will appear on Quebec screens in 2012.

With files from Postmedia