Director: Benoît Chieux
Two sisters slip through a gap between backyard reality and a windswept fantasy realm in "Sirocco and the Kingdom of Winds", a 2023 Franco-Belgian animated feature directed by Benoît Chieux.
What is Sirocco and the Kingdom of Winds about?
Next door to sisters Juliette and Carmen lives Agnès, a neighbor who fills notebooks with stories about a place called the Kingdom of the Winds. What starts as bedtime fiction turns out to be something closer to a map: the girls stumble onto an actual passage linking their ordinary world to that fantastical one. Crossing over changes them immediately and literally, transforming both sisters into cats the moment they arrive on the other side. Once inside this realm, they cross paths with Sirocco, a formidable figure whose command over the wind itself makes him both the region's greatest threat and its most consequential presence. Getting home again means understanding Sirocco rather than simply running from him, and the sisters have to rely on each other's instincts as much as on any magic they find along the way. Chieux builds the Kingdom of the Winds as a fully imagined watercolor-style world, and the 80-minute runtime moves briskly between the sisters' bond, the dangers of the fantasy realm, and the mystery behind Sirocco's power over the storms that shape it.
Cast & crew
The French-language voice cast is led by Loïse Charpentier and Maryne Bertieaux as the sisters, with Aurélie Konaté, Pierre Lognay, Laurent Morteau, Éric De Staercke, David Dos Santos, and Géraldine Asselin rounding out the ensemble.
Context & significance
Produced across Belgium and France, the film is part of a strong recent run of European hand-drawn and watercolor-influenced animation aimed at family audiences, following in the tradition of studios that favor painterly backgrounds over computer-generated polish. It premiered in 2023 and drew attention for its distinctive visual treatment of wind and weather as narrative forces in their own right.
Where & how to watch
"Sirocco and the Kingdom of Winds" is available on K-Time with a Persian dub, making it an easy pick for family movie nights in Farsi-speaking households. This page can be read by anyone, while streaming the film requires signing into a K-Time account, and the platform's viewing experience is built around a Farsi-first interface for the diaspora audience.