Kiri and Lou, the two young, prehistoric creatures in the Aotearoa bush winning fans around the world. Photo / Stretchy

For the New Zealand International Film Festival, it possibly sets some sort of record – the Kiwi director with the longest gap between features appearing in the event.

Harry Sinclair premiered his second, the quirky dairy-farm love story The Price of Milk, at the NZIFF back in 2000. At this month’s festival he returns with his fourth, Kiri and Lou Go Raaa! It’s the big-screen extension of the kids’ animated series Kiri and Lou, he created with Christchurch animator Antony Elworthy. The show has run over four seasons of bite-sized episodes on kids’ channels around the world since 2019, along the way winning fans of all ages as well as children’s TV awards, including a Bafta nomination.

Kiri and Lou, about the friendship between two young, prehistoric creatures in the Aotearoa bush, has attracted a supergroup of local talent. Jemaine Clement has voiced the sleepy purple elephantine creature Lou, and Olivia “Liv” Tennet the small, yellow and excitable dinosaur Kiri. Other regulars creating a radio play out of Sinclair’s scripts before the animators get to work doing frame-by-frame claymation have included Josh Thomson, Rima Te Wiata and Jaquie Brown. And the music has been by Don McGlashan, Sinclair’s one-time offsider in 1980s theatre/music/film duo The Front Lawn, which the show’s songs sometimes resemble – even when they are being sung by guest stars such as Marlon Williams, Tami Neilson and Julia Deans.

For Sinclair, who has divided his life between Los Angeles, where he has a teenage daughter who as an infant helped inspire the show, and New Zealand, Kiri and Lou has become the biggest calling card of a restless creative career.

How you doing? Harry Sinclair, left, and Don McGlashan. The film gave them the chance to do something on an operatic scale. Photo / Robert Sarkies

Why a movie?

Well, we’ve made four seasons of the show – 104 episodes – and I was always kind of craving the opportunity to tell a bigger story and put things into a more epic scale, because with four-minute and 30-second episodes, you can’t really whip up a proper drama. I was itching to do that, and I could see the possibilities of the origin story of these two characters and how they first met. It’s such a pleasure to take the whole world and expand it to a bigger platform, a bigger place.

What did Don McGlashan say when you said you were doing a film?

We talked about it for a long time and he was just really into the idea of building musical shapes. Like, for example, we foreshadow many musical motifs through it and then we reveal the song with those things that we’ve been hearing for 40 minutes. It was the chance to do something operatic, on a bigger scale.

Because of the short episodes, he’d have to get to the chorus pretty fast.

Yeah, exactly. I would write some lyrics, and then often Don would come back with a song, and then I’d say, “I’m so sorry but it’s too long.” Almost always it was too long, because he just wrote these beautiful things. We did a lot of trimming.

To go from mini episodes to this, was there any great change in how the animation was done?

No, it was the same, except everything was bigger just to be a bit more precise, because we knew it was going to be on the big screen, so if someone dropped a bit of their lunch on the set, you’d notice.

Given this adventure was bigger than anything Kiri and Lou had been through before, that risks bigger scares for younger kids. But the storytelling has a clever framing device that keeps reminding them everything will be okay.

I was conscious from the very start that we were going to try to make a movie that should entertain the whole family, should be a ripping yarn with lots of adventure and excitement, and yet how are we going to do that without terrifying a bunch of 3-year-olds? So, I thought up this framing of it, that it’s all a story that’s being told to someone who is very scared, and I could stop the drama here and there and remind everybody that there’s nothing to be afraid of and nothing bad’s actually going to happen. The main thought behind it was how to entertain everybody without terrifying the smallest members of the crowd.

Talking of size, the movie gets some exceptionally big creatures, including something whale-like and a flock of pterodactyls.

Well, in the series there’s Pania, who’s a sort of stegosaurus who’s really huge, and she interacts with a character called Small, who’s about as big as one of her eyeballs. We’ve always played with these extremes of scale; it’s been a running theme. I love the idea of playing with scale – you can’t do that very easily in the movies with live action, but the things you can play with in animation are really fun.

In the film you have a volcano erupting and small creatures escaping on the backs of pterodactyls. It reminded me of the end of the Lord of the Rings trilogy with Frodo and Sam escaping Mt Doom on the backs of eagles. You were in those movies [Sinclair had a non-speaking role as Isildur, who cut the One Ring from Sauron’s hand in the preamble of the first film] and you’ve been to Mt Doom …

I was. But I was thinking more of how to make the climax of the film visually impressive. So, the idea was let’s fill the sky with birds … and growing up in Auckland, I was always very aware of volcanoes.

Going back, how much did becoming a father inspire all this?

Having a kid was a big influence, because I thought, “What would I like my daughter to watch?” I started off trying to make Kiri and Lou very calm, because I felt that the whole culture of children’s television was, for me, a little frantic, although of course Kiri and Lou the movie is not exactly calm – it’s supposed to be entertaining. But being a father and watching my daughter running around was a big a big influence, especially because at its heart, Kiri and Lou has always been about the emotional experience of being a little kid, and there are many episodes about emotions and I obviously learned an enormous amount from observing my daughter and her friends and how they handle difficult moments.

Creator Harry Sinclair, and the two young creatures escaping from 'Mt Doom'. Photos / Stretchy; Robert Sarkies

Have you noticed what type of kid tends to like the show?

No, I haven’t. That’s a good question. I suspect it’s often kids whose parents like it. A lot of people who don’t have kids watch the show and we get messages from Germany like, “I’m 70 years old and I don’t have any children, but I find your show very calming before bed”, or things like that. So, we have a big audience of adults, but I don’t know which kids gravitate towards it particularly.

How has the success of Kiri and Lou been for you?

Well, it’s the longest job I’ve ever had, so it’s incredibly different from doing something for three months and then wondering for the next year what the hell is going to happen. It’s been kind of calming, so that’s good. And making things for children has been a revelation for me, because it’s a very satisfying feeling when kids enjoy the show. You make an indie movie and it may or may not be a success or it’s in the theatres for two weeks. But making a Kiri and Lou, that feels like it’s a useful thing to do, one that lasts for generations, possibly. And when you’re entertaining kids, you can do things that would feel too silly or too on-the-nose for adult entertainment. It’s very liberating in terms of what you can write about. I never run out of ideas. I’ve got an idea for another movie, and my producer, Fiona Copland, was horrified that I’d already had an idea for a sequel to the prequel.

The songs are credited to The Front Lawn. Have you ever considered having some other Front Lawn reunion or project other than Kiri and Lou?

We often talk about it but then we get busy. We’ve considered it many times, and we should because we’re best friends and we just get along great, and there’s no sort of reason not to, except we’ve just been so busy with Kiri and Lou.

Is Kiri and Lou’s friendship like yours with Don?

No, I don’t think so. Maybe a little bit. I was always pretty sleepy like Lou and he’s definitely sparkier and sort of running around and I’m always more sort of a napping-in-the-back-of-the-van type of guy. There may be some parallels.

Is the movie the end of this particular chapter?

It depends on how successful it is because I’d like to do more if anyone wants it. But we’re working on another series now which is just going on TV in New Zealand called Tra La La, which is another preschool one and it’s 2D animation, not claymation. Kiri and Lou has been a very satisfying project and I’ve loved it, and the fact that we’ve been able to make so much of it and that it’s on all over the world in different languages … it just seems miraculous to me. I’d like to point a camera and do live action at some point again. I feel I’m just getting started.

You must have a drawer of ideas of things that never got made.

The interesting thing is that most of those things that didn’t get made are awful. So, when I look in that drawer and think, “Oh my God, I didn’t make this”, it’s not regret, it’s relief.

Kiri and Lou Go Raaa!, NZ International Film Festival, Auckland, August 8; Wellington, August 15; Christchurch, August 23, Dunedin, August 23. The film also goes on general release from August 8.

Kiri and Lou Concerts playing music from the show, presented by Olivia Tennet (the voice of Kiri), are also taking place. Dates: Dunedin Symphony Orchestra, Dunedin Town Hall, August 15; Auckland Philharmonia, Bruce Mason Centre, August 22; Orchestra Wellington, Michael Fowler Centre, August 29.

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Kiri and Lou creator Harry Sinclair takes his beloved characters to the big screen