Joseph: King of Dreams

This was conceived as a prequel to The Prince of Egypt and designed as a companion piece to it. It is DreamWorks Animation's first straight-to-video production, released on DVD and VHS on 7 November 2000. The story comes from Genesis: Joseph, Jacob's favourite son, his ability to interpret dreams, and his brothers' jealousy. They sell him into slavery; he ends up in Egypt, goes to prison, and by interpreting the pharaoh's dreams becomes the second most powerful man in the country. Then famine comes and his brothers appear in front of him without knowing who he is. Its most striking passages are the dreams, which the crew described as the hardest part of the production: Joseph's visions are drawn to look like a Van Gogh painting in motion, moving into a completely different visual language from the rest of the film. Ben Affleck voices Joseph and Mark Hamill voices his brother Judah. Who it is for: family audiences interested in biblical narrative and in lesser-known animation experiments. Who it is not for: anyone expecting the scale of The Prince of Egypt. The budget is visibly lower, the animation simpler, and the songs are not at the same level.