Episode 173 - Kirikou and the Sorceress (Michel Ocelot, 1998) (with Lewis C. Seifert)

Kirikou and the Sorceress (Michel Ocelot, 1998).

The Fantasy/Animation podcast takes listeners on a journey through the intersection between fantasy cinema and the medium of animation. Available via Apple Podcasts, Spotify and many of your favourite podcast hosting platforms!

For Episode 173, Chris and Alex introduce the films of Michel Ocelot with this close look at the filmmaker’s successful animated adventure film - loosely based on a West African folktale - Kirikou and the Sorceress (Michel Ocelot, 1998). The discussion into the film’s articulation of magical realism, power, and struggle features special guest Lewis C. Seifert, who is Professor of French and Francophone Studies at Brown University. Lewis’ research interests encompass early Modern France, gender and sexuality studies, folk narratives, and the environmental humanities, and he is the author of Fairy Tales, Sexuality, and Gender in France, 1690-1715: Nostalgic Utopias (Cambridge University Press, 1996) and Manning the Margins: Masculinity and Writing in Seventeenth-Century France (University of Michigan Press, 2009). Listen as the trio reflect on hyperrealism, Ocelot’s expressive and experimental pictorial styles, and the structural influence of fables upon the narrative; registers of innocence and intelligence in the depiction of Kirikou; tensions between the individual and the disassociation of community, alongside the function of empathy and superstition within the status of magic; and the possible risks of reading Kirikou and the Sorceress through a predominantly orientalist and essentialist lens.

**This episode was produced and edited by Menelik Thaim-Lee*

**Fantasy/Animation theme tune composed by Francisca Araujo**

**As featured on Feedspot’s 25 Best London Education Podcasts**

**As featured on MillionPodcast’s Best 10 UK Animation Podcasts and Best 60 Movie Podcasts in the UK**

Suggested Readings

• Batkin, Jane. 2025. Childhood in Animation: Navigating a Secret World. New York: Routledge.

• Fox, ‎Alistair, Michel Marie, ‎Raphaëlle Moine, and Hilary Radner, eds. 2015. A Companion to Contemporary French Cinema. Oxford: John Wiley & Sons.

• Neupert, Richard. 2014. French Animation History. Oxford: John Wiley & Sons.

• Tiffin, Jessica. 2009. Marvelous Geometry: Narrative and Metafiction in the Modern Fairy Tale. Detroit: Wayne State University Press.