‘Arlequino & Pierrot’, a short animated film about the tragic love story between the happy clown Arlequino and the sad clown Pierrot, based on a graphic novel by the late Revital Bronshtein, marked a collaboration between India and Israel in a creative field.

Co-Produced by Israel’s The Hive Studio, an award-winning animation studio that develops and produces animated films, series, and commercials and India’s Live Pixel Technologies, ‘Arlequino & Pierrot’ was screened at the International Festival for Animation, Comics and Caricature held in Tel Aviv between August 4 and 8,  according to a PTI report from Tel Aviv.

Revital, known by her pen name ‘Navy Bird’, was shot and killed by terrorists on her way home in October 2024 at the age of 24 before she could fulfil the dream of seeing her work animated.

Recognised as a young artist of “whimsical and fantastical comics and graphic novels,” Navy Bird’s work includes two graphic novels, ‘Arlequino & Pierrot’, which has been posted as a webcomic, and ‘Still Earth’, which has been self-published and sold at conventions and comic book stores.

Her mother, Liora, said in an emotional speech “many would go wayward” after such a shocking incident, but she pulled herself up to dedicate her life to bringing her daughter’s dream to fruition.

Director Anan Gibson said in a statement she met ‘Navy Bird’ in Israel’s local animation community, and it was “clear she possessed a rare artistic voice, one that was whimsical, deeply emotional, and entirely her own”.

“When I later read ‘Arlequino & Pierrot’, I knew it was a world that deserved to be brought to life through animation. This film is my way of honouring Revital’s memory,” Gibson said.

Co-Producer Amit Russell Gicelter of The Hive Studio praised the collaboration with his Indian partner Rajeev Dwivedi, Founder & CEO of Live Pixel Technologies, and said his cooperation was phenomenal from the start.

“The collaboration is being recognised as the first-ever animation co-production between an Indian and an Israeli studio, bringing together two production houses from distinct creative traditions to build a single, shared IP for global audiences. It is proof of concept that Indian and Israeli studios can build world class IP together”, Dwivedi told PTI.

The animated film shows the happy clown Arlequino and the sad clown Pierrot perform together in a circus travelling by train. Arlequino believes their life together is perfect, until one night, during a performance, Pierrot suddenly leaves the circus, bringing both the show and the train itself to a halt.

It is supported by the Makor Foundation for Israeli Films. In addition, the producers raised nearly forty thousand Euros through crowdfunding on Kickstarter.