The second season of Star Wars: Visions, which premieres this Thursday, eschews the anime-exclusive format of last season to make a showcase work from around the world by renowned studios like Aardman (Wallace & Gromit) and Cartoon Saloon (Wolfwalkers). Should this approach happen to whet your appetite for even more great world animation, not to worry: A new animated series of afrofuturist-inspired shorts will premiere on Disney Plus later this summer.
Produced by Peter Ramsey, co-director of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, Kizazi Moto: Generation Fire is an animated anthology dedicated to imagining the future from an African perspective. The first teaser trailer for the series quietly dropped on Youtube earlier this week, offering an impressive first glimpse at this stunning new collection of sci-fi fantasy animation.
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“I’m really pleased to be part of a ground-breaking, fresh and exciting project that’s aimed at exposing the world to a whole new wave of creativity and invention from a place that is just ready to explode onto the world animation scene,” Ramsey said in a statement when the series was first announced in 2021.
“The films in the anthology kind of run the gamut when it comes to science fiction,” he added. “There are stories that touch on other worlds, time travel, and alien beings, but all of these genre conventions are seen through an African lens that makes them totally new. I can’t wait for people to have their minds blown and say, ‘I want more!’”
The 10-part anthology will feature work from rising animation talents across six African nations. The process of curating and selecting the talent to contribute to Kizazi Moto was supervised by the team at Triggerfish, the South African studio behind the Star Wars: Visions season 2 short “Aau’s Song.” Triggerfish will be the lead studio for the anthology, making Kizazi Moto: Generation Fire the studio’s second collaborative production for Disney.
Kizazi Moto: Generation Fire will stream on Disney Plus this summer.