WATCH: Ann Marie Fleming Talks About Her Oscar-Contending Feature ‘Window Horses’ (Video Interview)

“The more you learn about others, the more you deepen your understanding of yourself,” director Ann Marie Fleming tells Cartoon Brew about her quirky and enjoyable feature film debut, Window Horses.

The film is about Rosie (voiced by Sandra Oh of Grey’s Anatomy), a mixed-race Chinese/Iranian girl who travels to Iran to participate in a poetry festival, while hoping to discover why her Iranian father abandoned her as a child.

In the interview below, Fleming, a veteran filmmaker and comic artist, talks about the multicultural themes of her film, and why she believes there’s a universality in the specificity of her story:

Distributed in the United States by First Pond Entertainment, Window Horses is one of 26 animated features currently vying for an Academy Award nomination.

The film, an official selection at Annecy and Toronto Int’l Film Festival, has picked up numerous awards on the festival circuit as well as award organizations, including from Bucheon Int’l Animation Festival, Canadian Screen Awards, Vancouver Film Critics Circle, Riverrun Int’l Film Festival , Stuttgart Festival of Animated Film, and Nashville Film Festival.

Fleming produced the film through a combination of funding and support from Telefilm Canada, various Canadian film incentive and tax credit programs, the National Film Board of Canada, and an Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign.

For more information about the film, visit WindowHorses.com.