Azur & Asmar: The Princes' Quest

Azur & Asmar: The Princes' Quest (French: Azur et Asmar) is a 2006 animated fairytale fantasy film written and directed by Michel Ocelot and animated at the Paris animation and visual effects studio Mac Guff Ligne. It was released in theaters in North America as just Azur & Asmar. An international co-production between France, Belgium, Italy and Spain, it is Ocelot's fourth feature, though his first wholly original creation since Kirikou and the Sorceress, and his first use of 3D computer graphics, albeit an atypical employment of this medium with two-dimensional, painted backgrounds and non-photorealistic rendering. Like most of his films, it is an original fairy tale, in this case, inspired by the folklore (such as the One Thousand and One Nights) and decorative art of Maghreb, Algeria and Morocco and with an increased degree of characterisation relative to his previous works which push it into the genre of fairytale fantasy. The original-language version of the film has significant amounts of dialogue in both French and Arabic; however, the Arabic was not subtitled in the original French theatrical release and is not intended to be subtitled nor replaced for any other audiences.