Animation · Review ·
The Violinist
Ervin Han and Raúl García's hand-drawn The Violinist, a wartime love story between two young musicians in Singapore, won the Annecy Cristal, and the critics are split. Admirers praise its music, its look and its sincerity; the harshest review finds it clumsy, and even fans call it openly old-fashioned melodrama.
Read it for the score and the scale, not for subtlety. Read from the reviews: three and a half out of five.
Dir. Ervin Han & Raúl García · 2026 · 114 min · English, with Mandarin and Japanese spoken · hand-drawn · Singapore, Spain, Italy
The setup
Two children grow up together in Singapore in the years before the Second World War. Fei comes from a wealthy Peranakan family and is learning the violin. Kai is an orphan taken in by the household's servant, a boy who discovers his own gift by listening to her practise. They become friends, then something more, and they dream of becoming great musicians. The story is told as a memory: an older Fei is interviewed by a journalist, and her answers pull the film back through the decades. History is on its way to the two of them. That is the first act, and where this review stops.
What works
The music is the film. The score is by Ricky Ho and Isabel Latorre, and it won the SACEM Award for best original soundtrack at Annecy, the festival where the film also took the Cristal for a Feature Film, the top prize. Critics who like it say the animated violin playing, especially the hands, is made with care, and that the music is what carries the feeling from scene to scene. Cineuropa's Fabien Lemercier praises the hand-drawn look and the flashback structure, and says it joins a personal story to wider history. Reviewers also single out the Singapore setting: recognisable places such as the Botanic Gardens and the Esplanade, and period scenes that make history feel lived rather than learned. It is also reported as the first Singapore animated feature in fifteen years.
It is imperfect, occasionally excessive but always deeply moving.
Bakchormeeboy
The look shifts as the story does. One review describes moves between fluid character animation, choreographed violin performances, sketches and watercolour imagery, with memory sequences that dissolve into colour and gesture, though it adds that the shifts are not always seamless.
What doesn't
This is a film critics argue about. The harshest review, from In Review Online, calls the voice acting and animation distractingly weak, finds the history mechanical and the script full of clichés and anachronistic language, and says the film's festival success says more about the festival circuit than about the film. Even the five-star review calls it openly old-fashioned melodrama with characters who sometimes stand for ideals, signposted emotions and uneven animation and voice work. Another reviewer notes some viewers may find the film's focus on music alienating at first. If you want restraint, you will probably find this too much.
How the critics line up
Split, but leaning warm. Cineuropa and the Singapore reviews are positive, one with five stars, while In Review Online is negative; Screen Daily's headline calls it sedate, traditional animation. The Annecy jury sided with the admirers. That is why the score below is good, not great: the best case for the film is strong and the worst case is serious, and the middle is a sincere, ambitious film with rough edges.
Is this for you?
Who it's for
Viewers who want a wartime love story told through music, and who can enjoy melodrama on its own terms. Adults and older children who like traditional hand-drawn animation will find a large-scale, personal, Southeast Asian story that animation rarely tells. Anyone who needs subtlety or polish should read the negative reviews before buying a ticket.
Where to watch
It opened in Singapore cinemas on 17 September 2026 and has played festivals including Annecy and Toronto, with further festival screenings listed for Busan and Hof. Release dates for other countries are not confirmed in the sources used here, and availability varies by country, so check your local cinema listings and festival programmes.