[S] "The Adventures of Franck and Friends"

Ah, I think I saw you post on the LostMediaFr Reddit!

So you don't own this VHS and don't have a copy of this cartoon?

The screencaps at the back... aren't like any cartoon I saw before... maybe it isn't even French, despite the ship name...

Could it be Flemish? Northern Belgium(Flanders) speaks Flemish(a dialect of Dutch/Nederlands) as opposed to Southern Belgium(Wallonia) which speaks a dialect of French. Unlike North & South Korea, they are not separate countries nor really in the same situation at all, so some Flemish folks may've made this animated film because they heard French speaking folks from South Belgium talk about the boat. Maybe it could've been even be made as a teaching tool for the Flemish folk to learn French? Or really maybe it's just an animated movie about some French thing that South Belgium talks about often, but not so much in North Belgium due to the language barrier, essentially making people in Flanders be able to know about some French event in a language they can speak(that being Flemish).

At this point I'm very convinced it's just a long forgotten French (or at least French-speaking country) film that wasn't even popular when it came out.

The movie has been uploaded!



And it seems it really was French! Original title: « Les Conquérants »!

The credits are in French and cite many French animators; with character designers whose visual style is recognizable such as the Papyrus cartoon!

Now, this movie has no mention at all on the internet (if you don’t count our very discussions here and on Reddit).

And the animation is kinda choppy, has the characters transparent and sketchy black and white…

I would say, it seems the movie was never officially finished, and so it was never cited in anyone’s resume, and for some reason, through some way… the rough reel found itself in the hands of some Brazilian distributor who found a way to have it sold as a genuine feature cartoon…

Interesting how Brazil is doing those things! This country can help us reveal some long-lost treasures...

That is awesome!!!
Hmm... The film looks like it wasn't really been finished, which explains why it's so difficult to find anything about it on the internet. It seems that production was interrupted on the "pencil test" part. Strangely, all the backgrounds were fully painted and finished, in contrast to the unfinished animation that was still even on paper.

After watching the whole film, I could say that, if it was properly completed, it would really be something successful. The characters are full of personality, the animation is fluid enough, the story is captivating, etc. But the film ends with an abrupt cut, without an outcome or explanation of some of the things that happened previously (what happened to Satya on the boat when he was young, what was really inside the boxes left on the island, ...) , mainly because it was not finished at all, which is a shame. The film is very good.

Part of what is written on the cover seems to be true: the film was most likely something made for World Children's Day or something children-related. It touches a lot on the subject of young people's rights, child slavery, children being exploited or abused, etc. what makes me believe that this was indeed made for it, kind of like the "Meena" cartoon, also from 1993. But it definetely wasn't a success in over 100 countries 😅

Actually, that is my friend's YouTube channel. So I guess he finally managed to find a copy of it somewhere. That's great! I'll email him later about this.