EXCLUSIVE: Sébastien Laudenbach’s Viva Carmen, an animated retelling of Georges Bizet’s famous opera Carmen, debuts in Cannes Directors’ Fortnight this week and Deadline reveal a first clip.

In Seville in 1945, a pulsating town of sailors and small-time crooks, teenage Salvador, assistant to the gifted knife grinder Antonio, encounters a captivating young gypsy woman, Carmen.

Her stunning beauty and independent spirit set the town abuzz, but Antonio’s mystical ability to glimpse the future in sharpened blades foretells a tragic fate for Carmen at the hands of a soldier, José.…