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Michel Ocelot's animated film Azur & Asmar (2006) tells the story of Azur, the son of a medieval French nobleman, who is raised by Jénane, his Muslim wet nurse and nanny. Azur grows up regarding Jénane as his mother and her biological son, Asmar, as his brother; thus he is heartbroken when his jealous father kicks them out, on the pretext that Azur has become too old for a nanny. When he comes of age, Azur decides to travel to North Africa, Jénane's birthplace, in hopes of rescuing the djinn fairy, the heroine of the fairy stories she had told him as a child. In doing so, he is reunited with her and becomes first Asmar's rival and then his partner in the quest to rescue and marry the djinn fairy.
If you have not heard of this film or its director, it is most likely because unlike the films of his French colleague Sylvain Chomet, creator of The Triplets of Belleville (2003) and The Illusionist (2010), Ocelot's folk- and fairy-tale-inspired films, Kirikou and the Sorceress (1998), Azur & Asmar (2006),1 Princes and Princesses (2000), and Tales of the Night (2012), did not receive wide release in the United States. In part, this is because Ocelot's most acclaimed films, Kirikou and the Sorceress and its sequels, which are set in precolonial West Africa, depict native village women with their breasts uncovered, and Azur & Asmar opens with a depiction of Jénane breastfeeding both boys. Although these films were screened in many countries in Europe, South America, and Asia where breast-feeding in public is more normative, US theater owners were concerned that their audiences might consider any female nudity to be inappropriate in films meant for children.2
A second factor that may have contributed to the inability of Azur & Asmar to find an audience in the United States was a dip in the popularity of fairy-tale-themed animated films among audiences and producers around the time of its release. Though Azur & Asmar was the second US release by the respected film distribution company GKIDS, which went on to popularize such acclaimed international animated films as Sita Sings the Blues (2008), The Secret of Kells (2009), and Up on Poppy Hill (2011),3...