November 18th, 2020 
Jerry Beck 
L.A-based distribution label LAAF (an off-shoot of the Los Angeles Animation Festival and FilmFest Distribution) drops festival feature film favorites The Last Fiction and SHe just in time for the holidays.
Many wonderful international animated features still find it hard to acquire US distribution – and that’s where the newly launched LAAF label comes in. After a decade in production, the 2-D animated feature The Last Fiction is finally released in the US. The debut feature from the Tehran-based Hoorakhsh Studios and 7 Sky Animation Ltd., it is also the first Iranian animated feature to qualify for the Oscars.
Written and directed by Ashkan Rahgozar, The Last Fiction is a game-changer – being the most sophisticated and technologically advanced feature to emerge from the Iranian animation industry to date. Based on the classic Iranian tale “The Shahnameh” (“The Book of Kings”) by Ferdowsi, the film is an epic, action-packed tale of Persian mythology, adventure and intrigue in the vein of The Lord of the Rings, and is geared at a teen and adult market.
Critically lauded worldwide, The L.A.Times’ Carlos Aguilar described it as an “Epically exhilarating saga.”
Shengwei Zhou’s critically celebrated debut feature SHe is also released this week on AMAZON worldwide. This powerful, stop-motion feature, is a David Lynchian, technicolor dreamscape of anthropomorphized shoes and household objects. In this tale a high heel shoe turns herself into a man’s shoe in order to work and feed her daughter in an authoritarian world. SHe features a stunning, wall-to-wall music score from acclaimed composer Sihan Yuan. One that replaces the need for words during the entire production.
VARIETY’S Dennis Harvey describes SHe as both “A major event” and “As accomplished and inventive as it is conceptually bizarre.”
LAAF is the distribution label of the LOS ANGELES ANIMATION FESTIVAL.
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