A curious blue balloon leads a girl on an adventure through the streets of Paris, but when she crosses paths with a little boy and his red balloon, it becomes clear there’s a greater magical force at work between the balloons.

Le Ballon Bleu (The Blue Balloon) is our love letter to the classic 1956 French film Le Ballon Rouge (The Red Balloon). There’s one scene in that film when the boy and girl meet, and their balloons share a moment of being attracted to each other. We asked ourselves, “what’s the little girl’s side of the story? And why is her blue balloon attracted to the boy’s red balloon?” We had been wanting to tell a story about how complicated it can be for people to connect and make friends sometimes —how so often fear gets in the way. We asked ourselves, “if Pixar were going to tell this story how would they do it?” And, then we realized this needed to be the story about the balloons themselves and why they are trying to connect with each other. When we realized it was a love story (between the balloons) we knew we had a great story to tell. This film, like the original, embodies the importance of childhood friendship, and the magic that can exist in the world around us which adults have come to ignore, but children choose to see.

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