Fantasia Fest 2025: Maya, Give Me A Title Review

This will be one of many reviews during this year’s Fantasia International Film Festival, to keep up with our latest coverage, click here.

Maya, Give Me A Title (or Maya, donne-moi un titre in French) is writer-director Michel Gondry’s first effort at a full-length animated narrative film, utilizing a mix of paper cut-out animation, stop-motion animation, and occasional live-action sequences to guide the story. The film centers around the peculiar adventures of his daughter Maya, told through various animated vignettes narrated by Pierre Niney. 

Throughout the film’s short 62-minute runtime, Gondry optimizes every animation tool to provide a lively and endearing tribute to the stories suggested by Maya. As she becomes a mermaid, a police officer, a cargo ship captain, and more, Gondry selflessly creates these well-crafted handmade tales that graciously put his daughter on a pedestal. Rounding out this charming and delightful nature are the small touches he adds to emphasize this handmade feature, such as swirling letter patterns in presenting the film’s credits and leaving his arms present in the shot as he adjusts every individual frame. The film elevates this delightful nature by providing thoughtful transitions between vignettes as live-action Maya continues to build a collection of souvenirs from her adventures.

Niney’s voice provides a calming but expressive representation of Gondry himself coupled with the expressive music reminiscent of either George Carlin or Ringo Starr narrating Thomas the Tank Engine.  Mirroring Niney’s narration is the use of descriptive text boxes and speech balloons in tribute to DIY simplistic comic book creation for a younger audience. Alliteration, as well, is sparsely used to emulate the idea of Maya living in a quirky nursery rhyme. Gondry consistently breaks the fourth wall within these stories, not just being aware that these are indeed just stories, but that they are being compiled into a film like he’s creating a video essay for the heart of Maya.

Overall, through the film, Michel Gondry builds an endearing tribute to the imagination of his daughter with his well-crafted handmade animation. Maya, Give Me A Title fuses quirky paper cut-out animation, expressive music, stylized comic book inspiration, and more to provide a heartfelt homage to Maya’s fictional adventures away from her father.

still courtesy of Maison4tiers

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Costa Christoulas

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