Emily has been banging on about Chickenhare and the Hamster of Darkness for years, so she's delighted to have a professional reason to do it again. Matthieu Zeller, president and CEO of Belgium's nWave Studios, joins Andy, Jo, and Emily to talk about the Chickenhare franchise, whose second instalment — Chickenhare and the Secret of the Groundhog — is hitting cinemas now.

nWave is a 31-year-old studio with origins in stereoscopic 3D for IMAX and theme parks, and a track record of original animated features built on character-first storytelling, European financing, and budgets that are a fraction of what US studios spend. Matthieu is refreshingly direct about what that means: no massive battles or thousands-of-character set pieces, but a clarity of emotional storytelling that he argues can out-move the big studios when the script is right. The conversation gets into how nWave structures its financing through loyal European distribution partners, why constraints produce better creative work rather than worse, and why the mid-budget family animation that once anchored theatrical and DVD has been almost entirely forgotten by an industry fixated on franchises and streaming.

There's also a pointed argument running through the episode about who is actually underestimated in the room — and it's kids. Matthieu's view, backed up by test screenings, is that children handle sophisticated, layered storytelling far better than most adults in the industry give them credit for, and that the industry's tendency to dumb things down is both an insult and a missed opportunity. If you've ever wondered whether a good original family film can still get made outside the studio system, this episode is the answer.