A hard-boiled rhino, garrulous penguins, evil coyotes and a cross-continent voyage across lands both panoramic and perilous: on paper, Long Long Night might smack of déja vu for those who grew up on Pixar and DreamWorks. But Youm Kyu-bock’s first feature can hardly be called derivative. Adding harsher twists to his anthropomorphic protagonists’ experiences and a rougher edge to the world around them, the commercial director-turned-filmmaker has delivered a humorous, heartfelt and hard-hitting movie fueled by its critique of human intervention in nature and segregation in society.

Long Long Night, which bowed in Toronto, is an outlier in this year’s Busan International Film Festival competition, whose line-up is almost entirely made up of world or international premieres. The film’s selection might be a statement about a burgeoning trend in the Korean film industry, or an attempt to secure the festival more attention from beyond its cinephile base – or even a wish to get a domestic A-lister on the red carpet (singer and actress Bae Suzy plays the narrator in the film).

Whatever the reasoning for its appearance in Busan’s top-tier competition, Long Long Night certainly delivers as a for-all-ages animation movie revolving around talking animals. While essentially a road movie spiced up by gratuitous doses of slapstick comedy and tragic melodrama, Youm has somehow toughened the milder tone of his more child-oriented source material. Adapting Ruri’s novel himself, he treads a fine line between pleasing the kids and the adults in the audience, without overbalancing with either demographic by exaggerating his characters’ cuteness or dialling up their street cred.

The film is funny when it needs to be, but also frank in its depiction of the harsh cycles of nature and the brief lifespans of animals in the brutal world they live in. Admittedly, some of the action scenes feel a bit too much like gaming sequences. Youm and his animation team, led by Park Chung-shik, used an animation tool very familiar from video games. It’s also true that the film’s denouement oozes a sentimentality at odds with what goes before. But these are small quibbles about an enjoyable and perhaps culturally significant film for Youm and his peers.

In what amounts to a prologue, a white rhino is shown idling his days away in a natural reserve somewhere in Africa, enjoying being “treated like a king” by his carers and thinking about the tumultuous life he has led. Thus begins a long flashback: orphaned as a baby, Norden (voiced by Park Ki-wook) grows up with a herd of elephants who take him in as one of their own. His longing for a mate and his real roots eventually lead him to set off on a journey to discover his own identity, his sense of heartbreak, and – perhaps more importantly for the audience – the foibles of human nature, both in our misguided attempts to “protect” wildlife and the more catastrophic effects of war and destruction.

Devastated by the loss of his home and his loved ones, Norden’s life eventually regains meaning as he is charged with the mission of caring for a small penguin (Kim Gyu-na) and guiding him to a new life with his own posse. Recalling the well-rehearsed screen trope of the grumbling old man and the quick-talking imp, Long Long Night picks up speed as this odd couple soldiers on through deserts, savannahs and rocky plains, their friendship growing ever closer and more endearing. Their on-screen bond remains ceaselessly convincing, with each of them going through their own very different rite of passage. As a film, Long Long Night’s trek might even be seen as a metaphor for the Korean film industry’s slow but steady move from its dark days into the light, diverted into another genre from another time.

Director: Youm Kyu-bock
Screenplay: Youm Kyu-bock, based on the book “Long Long Night” by Ruri
Producers: Jung Kyoung-hee, Kang Dae-il
Executive producers: Jung Kyoung-hee, Kim Sang-youn
Voice cast: Park Ki-wook, Kim Gyu-na, Bae Suzy
Cinematography: Cho Sung-in
Editing: Chu Sun-hee
Animator: Park Chung-shik
Music: Kim Hyun-joo
Sound: Lee Sung-june
Production companies: Googgoog Studio, Studio Eon, The Contents On
World sales: Finecut
Venue: Busan International Film Festival (Competition)
In Korean