Written by Daniella Garcia, Photo courtesy of Walt Disney Animation Studios
Taking a look into Disney’s newest and 60th-anniversary film ‘Encanto,’ acclaimed writer and director of the picture, Jared Bush premiered the exclusive sneak peek into the Colombian-inspired world at this year’s SCAD Savannah Film Festival, portraying the magical lives of The Madrigal family. The film is co-directed by Byron Howard and co-written by Charise Castro Smith, along with an extensive team of collaborators including music and lyrics by the remarkable Lin-Manuel Miranda. Bush took the audience through an insightful journey with never-before-seen footage, exclusive new songs by Lin-Manuel and a dive into the characters and their family tree.
With a renowned body of work between Byron and Howard, including small pictures you may have heard of like ‘Zootopia,’ ‘Moana’ and ‘Tangled,’ they found that their mutual love of musicals is what would bring this film to life. As a journey that’s been 5 years in the making, with 8 internal screenings and hundreds of script drafts, the creators wanted to evolve and elevate their work as they had done on ‘Zootopia.’ “We wanted to have something to say without sacrificing the entertainment,” said Bush.
Bush was still finishing ‘Moana’ when they began to discuss the beginnings of ‘Encanto.’ As a collaborative effort, Bush, Howard and Miranda found that family would be their common theme as well as rooting the story in the question of “How well do we really know our families, and how well do they know us?” The foundations of the film, Bush explained, were perspective and understanding with Colombia as the inspiration behind it all and the home of magical realism.
In 2018, their team visited Colombia, noting its undeniably vibrant culture as “The crossroads of Latin America – combining new, old, global and local elements all into one,” said Bush. Amongst visiting Bogota and other small towns, including a huge inspiration for the film, Cocora Valley, they also visited areas of heightened spirituality, known as “encantos,” normally found in areas of natural wonder. It was magic tied to emotion, thus magical realism which would be the heart of the film.
It was an extremely important element of the film that they safeguard its authenticity by gaining Colombian cultures’ trust. The number of consultants on their team ranged from a variety of fields to ensure they’d stay true to the story that they were telling. Before even working on the script or story development, Bush explained how they’d simply all talk about family and how it would be the center of it all.
Through Zoom calls, they’d look at common archetypes within their own lives and families, the black sheep, the golden child and search for the family dynamics we can all relate to. “It’s one thing to be intellectually correct, but unless you have the cultural trust to say what’s right and feels true, we really just went for what felt right,” said Bush.
For so long, a new generation of vividly diverse characters lacked on the Disney screen and this special look into ‘Encanto’ gave us a promising insight into what Disney’s creators and storytellers have in store next. The highlight of the event? A senior dramatic writing student from Bogota, Colombia standing from her seat in tears, thanking Bush for telling this story and Colombia’s story, now.
