Nexus Studios Signs Directing Trio Coup de Foudre to Commercial Roster
April 20, 2026
Working through Oscar-nominated production cooperative COLA Animation, directors Sophie Colfer and Ala Nunu wrap themes of memory and loss into the enigmatic dreamworld of their multi-award winning short film Telsche.
Sophie Colfer and Ala Nunu: “This is a film about memory and lingering on the great frontier that separates us from those we have lost. These concepts are depicted in the contrast between light and dark, the symbolic obscuring of clouds, and the choice of still, wide shots, where the subjects are barely visible, on the verge of being seen but as of yet unremembered.
“Telsche was written after Sophie moved back to Hong Kong where she was born and grew up, after spending many years in the UK. On moving back, she was reunited with the vast sea that she knew from her youth, and with this came the memories of her family, so tied to the sea. Her mother was a Japanese diver and her father an English sailor.
“This is a film about memory and about lingering on the great frontier that separates us from those we have lost.”
“This is a world that has boundless creative potential for us, and so it is truly the world-building that was the most rewarding to work on. Conceptualizing the visual structure and understanding why that particular element of the world functioned like that, and how it tied to Telsche’s story.
“In terms of process, we feel that it is important to note that our collaboration took (and continues to take) place across a distance spanning thousands of kilometres and an eight-hour time difference (with Nunu in Portugal and Sophie in Hong Kong), and perhaps is one reason why we are so interested in ideas of time and multiplicities in our work.
“We entered the project thinking it would be a quick three months of production. But as we started to actually play with the imagery, the world started to grow more and more and the production ended up taking a year.”
Production: COLA Animation
Director: Sophie Colfer, Ala Nunu
Script/Storyboard: Sophie Colfer
Art Director: Ala Nunu
Animation Director: Ala Nunu
Animator: Ala Nunu, Agnieszka Czachór, Jakub Kaczmarek
Additional Animation/Inbetweening: Sophie Colfer, Ana Iutes, Ismael Fati, Olga Grechanova
Production Interns: Pedro Ramalho, Poornima Subramaniam
2D VFX: Vier Nev, Ala Nunu
Compositing: Ala Nunu
Edit: Sophie Colfer
Producer: Bruno Caetano
Production Accountant: António Selas
Accounting: Capitalges
Produced by: Pigeon Productions
Producer: Mikołaj Błoński
Creative Producer: Mateusz Kowalczyk
EP: Błażej Pieczonka, Abdulaziz Azzahrani (Alwasaet)
Distribution Specialist: Anna Waszczuk
Produced by: King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture – Ithra
Executive Producers: Maha Alabbad, Majed Z. Samman, Tariq Alkhawaji
Sound Design/Music: Namigu – Natalia Czekała, Krzysztof Guzewicz
