Among the seekers is the Malian family from the opening sequence, whose young daughter Awa (Naomi Mourton) charms Kitty with her dazzling knack for cat’s cradle. At the same time, the government is cracking down on war refugees and refusing to grant them asylum. In the contemporary setting, Anne Frank’s name emblazons a hospital, theater, bridge and school. The film’s title refers to Kitty’s search, but it’s also something of an accusation, a reminder that totems of cultural significance like the diary can become cast in amber, detached from their meaning. She removes it from the museum as she embarks on her quest for Anne, and the missing diary becomes the city’s top story, a 100,000-euro reward in the offing. According to the somewhat shaky logic, whether she’s visible or not, the diary is the crucial puzzle piece she needs. The logic of when she can and can’t be seen is explained to her - and us - by Peter (Ralph Prosser), a young street kid whose skills as a pickpocket would make Robert Bresson smile. Kitty’s baffled to find an endless stream of strangers crowding into Anne’s bedroom, peering at its sparse furnishings and the fangirl movie-star photos hanging on its walls.

She’s a resourceful and willowy redheaded teen with a fierce devotion to her creator, Anne (Emily Carey, whose unforced soulfulness matches that of Stokes), and she has no idea that she’s stepping into another world, 75 years after the girls last communicated. Through a serendipitous collision of weather and magic, the book’s glass display case shatters, an antique fountain pen is brought to life, and Kitty (voiced by Ruby Stokes) materializes from the lines of ink. On special exhibit inside is Anne’s original diary, with its red plaid cover and pages overflowing with her cursive writing.

Sowing the seeds of a subplot, a family of refugees from Mali, living on the street, struggle to save their tent from the violent winds. In the present day, designated for the sake of narrative license as “a year from now,” museumgoers queue up in a blustery storm. Most of the action revolves around the Anne Frank House - in its contemporary status as a world-famous museum and during its use from 1942 to 1944 as the secret annex where the Franks and the van Pels (called the Van Damms in the diaries and this film) hid from the Nazis. In its depiction of Amsterdam, where the story is largely set (with a heartrending visit to present-day Bergen-Belsen, the concentration camp where Frank died), there’s an architectural integrity to match the historical one. Working with animation director Yoni Goodman, whose innovative work gave Folman’s 2008 documentary, Waltz With Bashir, its hauntingly distinctive look, the filmmaker has taken another novel approach, placing 2D characters against stop-motion backgrounds. Venue: Cannes Film Festival (Out of Competition)

Anne Frank's Diary by Ari Folman