Belle and Sebastien, l’aventure continue is the second opus of a trilogy. How did you imagine it?

In the first film, there was a strong dramatic tension: it was the beginning of a friendship between the dog and solitary kid Sebastian. We tried to give the second opus a different pace: we wanted more adventure and we focused on the father/son relationship.

The action scenes are very believable.

We wanted the action to be as realistic as possible. This is why we worked with director Christian Duguay on the plausibility of elements and situations. There are a few special effects but they were mechanical rather than digital. It would have been simpler to use digital tools but we had chosen to remain faithful to the DNA of the first opus. On the set of the previous feature, the film director Nicolas Vanier had taken the kids into 40 inches of snow. Physically, this realistic approach shows on screen, especially in the kids’ reaction.

When did you find out that Christian Duguay would direct the film?

He arrived when we were writing the step outline. It was very pleasant to work with Christian: he was very respectful of the script while making his intentions clear to us. Christian Duguay was at the same time present, very curious about Nicolas Vanier’s work and concerned with respecting the strengths of the first film in order to create with his own talent the second opus. He managed to direct a more adventurous, more mysterious film with a gripping side to it. He found his place in the existing team. With lots of generosity, he picked up the characters where Nicolas had left them, took them elsewhere and made them grow.