Stowaways on the Ark

An old woodworm who lives in a very small piece of wood, near the top of a mountain, tells the story of his ancestors on their journey on the ark.

Willi, the oldest ancestor in the old worm's family tree, lives on a hole in a trunk, alongside his wife, Alice. One day, while both of them are eating in their house, it starts shaking. It turns out that this is one of the many trunks used to build an ark, constructed by a carpenter named Noah, who is discussing with God about the construction plans. God tells him that in the ark, he and his family will be saved and that he has to save a couple from each animal species. Meanwhile, the said trunk gets cut some more so it can be placed in the ark's structure, and the couple starts panicking inside.

The construction finishes and God throws a bottle to the ark, to celebrate. It doesn't break, and he tries harder. It falls into the ark's deck, and termites inside the tapered cork of the bottle get strewed into the deck's floor. God manages to break a second one and instructs some crows to inform the animals about the ark. Then, it's time for him to leave Noah. As Noah and his family help the animals to embark the ark, a female dragon who's carefully holding an egg tries to also embark. However, while attempting to do so, her egg falls and breaks. Now she's not allowed to enter the ship, as she doesn't have a partner.

God sends rain to begin the flood, and the ark starts sailing. Willi discovers some dark tunnels on his way home, and fears that something terrible is going on there. As the days pass, Willi and Alice give birth to a lot of baby woodworms. The bear from the upper deck tries to breathe life into the deck, by having the animals there making music with their sounds, while the one from the under deck tries to prompt the ones there to sing. However, the animals from the upper one get annoyed by the song of the others. After that, the animals are given food to eat, but they aren't pleased with it, and each animal starts blaming the other deck for that.

Willi tells his children, that the whole family needs to search these tunnels. The children do so, but animals from the decks hear them drilling through the wood, and once again, the bears from each deck start suspecting each other's deck for that. This relationship worsens with every happening inside the ark. Noah and his sons also realize that water is entering the storeroom, because of termites. Willi informs his children about the termites, and tells them to spread the word to other animals. They do so, but hardly anyone believes them. Meanwhile, as Willi and his children try to go to the main tunnel at the stern, he sees that the termites have captured his wife. He hears one of his children saying that the ants there can help then, as they release a smell that distracts the termites. Willi and two of his sons drill from where the ants are, to that tunnel, so the termites guarding Alice can get distracted from the smell and Willi can save her.

Suddenly, as the bears insist on blaming each other's deck for whatever is happening, some floors on the ark's inside crumble down, and the animals fall down. Also, the ark starts flooding, and they start panicking. The bears from the upper and under decks find some honey and find out that it's sticky enough to plug the holes. Eventually, they become friends. Noah notices a tumulus of termites located at a part of the deck near the bow. It starts crumbling down and ends up floating in the sea. The animals try to find a way to repair the ark, and a walrus inside the water instructs some whales to drag the ark to land. Noah's sons soon realize that the ark is ashore. With the water level lowered, the animals get debarked and the woodworm couple reunite.

After all the animals and the humans left, the woodworms stayed behind inside the ark and became their home for many generations. Over the course of time, the ark shrank down to the remains where the old woodworm still lives today. He concluded that while many people search in vain for the remains of the ark for years, they never found it for the more time passes, the less of the ark remains can be found.

Wolfgang Urchs initially came up with an idea for an adaptation of Candide. After the storyboard was given to the producers Dr. Ute Koll and Dr. Michael Schoemann, it was decided that it was too complex, and the producers tapped Urchs into working out an international story for children.[5] At some point, the film was partly seized from Urchs' control.[4] In some scenes, a model of the ark, built by Harald Kraut, one of the film's animators, is shot in live-action to be used via matte work, with live-action water, which is electronically colored.[5] As Kraut says:

There was not much happening in animation in Germany until recently, and no studio has produced animation of an international standard. Anyone interested in good animation had to go to England or the USA... This film is going to change the situation entirely. At long last, we have set up an animation studio capable of full animation, the first in Germany.

— Harald Kraut, "Stowaways on the Ark", Animator (Spring 1988)

At the end of the film's production, the relationship between producer Michael Schoemann (who went on the direct The Magic Voyage, another German film also starring a woodworm) and Urchs was strained due to creative differences.[6]

The footage shown on the woodworm's TV, are scenes from Battlestar Galactica and the 1982 film Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.

A scene depicting an alpaca which can be seen in the English trailer, was deleted from the final cut.[7]

There was a European release of the film's original soundtrack in compact and vinyl discs, published by the Frank Pleyer company, Junior Musikproduktion Frank Pleyer KG. Recordings were made in Elmulab Studio, and Union Studios in Munich, and it was mastered in Tonstudio Ulrich Kraus.[8]

The film was featured at the 22nd Giffoni Film Festival.[9] It is currently available on the German online children's streaming service, KIXI.[10]

• The Magic Voyage - another German animated film produced by MS-Films, also starring a woodworm

• Atlas International page
• Stowaways on the Ark at IMDb
• Stowaways on the Ark at Rotten Tomatoes
• Stowaways on the Ark at AllMovie
• Stowaways on the Ark at the Big Cartoon DataBase
• Stowaways on the Ark at FilmAffinity
• Stowaways on the Ark at Online-Filmdatenbank
• Stowaways on the Ark at filmportal.de