From the comic book that Maaike Hartjes made about her burnout and healing in 2018, Burnout Diary, an international animation film is being made by the Amsterdam animation studio Pupil. The half-hour animated film entitled I’m Perfectly Fine: Burnout Diarywill be ready in the second half of 2023, thinks Hartjes.
She is closely involved in making the film, she says. “The diary form of my comic book is not included, but my story about an artist – not Maaike, that was too Dutch, but Maya – who gets a burnout due to busyness, social media stress and her perfectionism.” Maya’s greatest fear, according to the synopsis of the film by Studio Pupil, is that she “can no longer be perfect.” She struggles to accept that “good enough” might actually be “good enough.”
Hartjes (1972) is involved in the art direction of the film: the backgrounds and designs of the characters were developed by her in Amsterdam in collaboration with director Dario van Vree. In Brussels, the moving images are made with 2-dimensional hand-drawn computer animation. The reason for this is that the film is partly Dutch and Belgian financed.
Game for patients
Initially, there was talk that the film for the general public – “entertainment, so to speak”, says Hartjes – would also be linked to an online program and a game with help for burnout patients. But whether, and in what form exactly, that will happen is still unclear, says Hartjes. For this extensive, innovative set-up, ‘I’m Perfectly Fine – Burnout Diary’ as an animation project won the international animation prize Trickstar Business Award in 2020 at the animation festival in Stuttgart.
Hartjes has been working on the film for about four years, especially on the design of the collage-shaped backgrounds. “After the appearance of my Burnout Diary Studio Pupil contacted us to see if we could turn it into an animation.” The Amsterdam film production company Submarine is co-producer.
Also read a portrait of production company Submarine: A studio from Amsterdam is conquering the world
Burnout: taboo
The ‘Burnout Diary’ animated film, which will be available in several languages, such as French and English, is currently intended for cinema, streaming and TV, says Hartjes. So far, the Belgian broadcasters RTBF and Canvas have purchased the film and will broadcast it in 2023. Other broadcasters, including the Dutch ones, seem to be waiting. Maybe, says Hartjes, “because they can’t imagine an animation film about burnout yet”.
Burnout is, as Hartjes in an interview in NRC about the book, is still a taboo subject. “Burnout is viewed far too negatively,” she said. Because she had a burnout, with a long healing process, she has become a different person. She is now happier in life as a self-employed person, “with less stress and more peace”. It was a bad time, “but now that I look back on it, joy prevails.”
Maaike Hartjes has become known for her autobiographical comics with simply drawn figures, which are also called stick puppets. Her diary strips were published in, among other things NRC Next and Viva published. She won the Stripschap Oeuvre Prize in 2016. Her ‘Burn-out Diary’ comic was also translated into German.