Disney helped Lebanese animator achieve his dreams – he hopes Moana 2 will inspire others

Louaye Moulayess tells The National about how working on the sequel allowed him to process his country's grief

Moana tells the story of a young Polynesian woman on a dangerous journey. The sequel is out next week. Photo: Disney

When the ongoing devastation in Lebanon began, Disney animator Louaye Moulayess was inconsolable. The country he was born and raised in was under threat, and lives across the country hung in the balance.

“When I heard the news of what’s happening in Lebanon, I talked to my manager, and I said: 'I need some time off. I need some isolation,'” Moulayess tells The National. “But after the first two or three days, I realised I couldn’t work from home either. I was feeling worse by myself.”

He was hard at work on Moana 2, the sequel to the beloved 2016 animated film, due to be released across the Middle East on Thursday. Sitting at home, he started thinking about the film he’d helped make – the story of a young Polynesian woman on a dangerous journey. ­

Moana is a strong-willed character, one who reflectively puts the weight of the world on her shoulders – something Moulayess relates to. But her journey cannot be completed alone. She relies on people from across cultures to join together to complete her grand mission.

“I realised, I need to go and be with people,” Moulayess says. "We’re stronger together. So I went back into the studio, back with my friends, and I found myself being creative again. This is the message of the film, and I really connected with that."

This isn’t the first time a Disney movie helped Moulayess through a hard time. In fact, if the power of a Disney classic hadn’t helped him during a key moment in his childhood, he may have never dreamt of travelling around the world to pursue animation.

“I remember, we had just heard bad news from a family member,” Moulayess says. "And that’s when I saw The Lion King. It just made me forget. It filled me with wonder.

“These movies can provide all sorts of things for kids – at times when you want to escape, when you want to have fun, when you want to forget and even when you want to remember that the world can be beautiful.”

And that’s what always pushed him through when making Moana 2. He knew what the first movie meant to children worldwide. At a difficult time for so many people in the region and around the world, perhaps this movie can not only act as a distraction but a reminder of the goodness of the human spirit.

“I really hope that when kids and adults see this movie, it will have the same effect that The Lion King had on me at that moment," he adds. "And I’m so lucky that I can help provide that.”

Growing up in Lebanon, Moulayess didn’t have the tools he needed to become an animator. He studied computer science and began training himself in computer animation, always aware of the vast distance between his small village on the Mediterranean and Burbank and San Francisco, the homes of Disney and Pixar respectively.

When he was 16, he found the email of a Pixar animator and worked up the courage to ask him for help. The animator replied right away, offering advice on how to attend animation school with a limited budget, and even where to study. The guidance worked, and he went to that exact school, landing an internship with Pixar after graduation.

To Moulayess’s surprise, his mentor at Pixar was that same man who had helped kickstart his journey years earlier. On the first day, he took his mentor aside and showed him the email he’d sent at 16.

“I looked him right in the eye and said: ‘I’m here because of you,'” says Moulayess.

Since then, Moulayess has worked on some of the biggest animated projects of the last decade, from The Peanuts Movie to Frozen 2 and Encanto. And even as established as he’s become, a vital voice on massive projects both because of his skill and invaluable cultural perspective, he thinks back to that brash teen who sent an email to a complete stranger.

“At the Disney Animation Studios, we have a wall in the hallway lined with artwork,” says Moulayess. "And every day, I walk down it, looking at what we’ve created together, and I often think about the kid I was.

"Never in a million years, sitting on the ground in my bedroom in Lebanon watching a VHS and then writing that email, did I think I’d be here one day. It’s magical.”

Each time he walks down that hallway, he’s a bit different. Animation continues to change, as technologies develop and open new creative possibilities. At the daily meetings, he and the team watch what they’re each creating, which fills him with inspiration and love for what he does. And the diverse community around him continues to enrich him, as they tackle those new problems together.

“On Moana 2, for example, we do something that rarely happens in the animated world. We let the characters age and explore how those changes manifest," he adds. "There are scenes where Moana is climbing a cliff in both movies, and we had to figure out how her physical and emotional changes – even her culture – affect her movements, down to the smallest detail."

As Moulayess traverses a changing landscape, he relies on his community, a shared love that both feeds and is fed by the very thing they make together.

“Everything we do, we do as a team," he says. "What happened to me is what happens in the movie. It connected me to this, and it connects us all.”