The largest and most important animated film festival in the world in Annecy (with the associated MIFA animated film market) outdid itself this year in its 63rd edition in the variety of programs, film offerings, conferences, presentation of technical innovations and expanded spectrum of animated film creation. The number of over 15,820 festival goers (badge holders) from 102 different countries documents the new boom in animated film. Jürgen Keuneke was one of them and reports from the animation capital in the French Alps.
This time, the event was particularly well-rounded, because in addition to growth (20%) compared to the previous year and digitalization in all areas, the beautiful weather also played along this time. Much to the delight of Festival Director Marcel Jean, who, together with his team, had once again ensured a varied, interesting and high-quality overall program. The quality of this program clearly sets it apart from the other 250 animated film festivals around the world. "This year I am particularly impressed by the richness and versatility of the films in these very challenging political times worldwide, which also document this in terms of content and artistic diversity!" said Jean. "During the selection process, we got to know a very wide variety of styles and artistic talents. The number of feature-length films submitted and their quality was also really impressive. In addition, the theme "Animation, Pride and Diversity" runs through our entire event!"
Versatile festival program
A total of 468 films were screened in the competitions this year. The pre-selection jury had selected 11 feature-length films for the Feature Film Competition. In the short film programs, 50 short films were in competition in 5 programs, and 54 short films from the newcomer section were screened in the student program. There were also TV films, TV series episodes and VR applications. Of course, there was also an overview of animated commercials and animated music videos.
But it is not only the competition programs that make it attractive for professionals, students and media professionals to travel to Annecy once a year. Screenings and premieres of "Out of Competition" feature-length films and "Out of Competition" shorts also took place. Festival-goers who, after a few days of watching films into the night, didn't just want to stroll through the beautiful old town of Annecy, visited exhibitions such as "Chicken Run" (original puppets from Aardman Animation for the new film "Chicken Run - Dawn of the Nugget") or the presentation of works by Theodore Ushev in the castle of Annecy. The third day of the festival also saw the opening of the associated MIFA, the world's most important trade fair for animated film. There were also workshops and conferences on animation for training and further education. Signing and drawing sessions by animation VIPs were particularly attractive for the next generation, who were happy to gather in large numbers around role models such as Bill Plympton and Peter Lord. Meetings with filmmakers and events in which well-known producers and companies talked "out of the box" and secret material was presented to the public for the first time made the offer attractive for those interested.
Focus on Mexican and Ukrainian films
As every year, students from the "Gobelins l'école de l`image" in Paris, among others, worked on the festival's successful daily trailer films as a semester project, incorporating the traditions of animated filmmaking in style and realization and telling an entertaining short story, garnished with the festival logo, the festival sponsor names and the "Lapin" rabbit figure (the festival's popular figure). This year, trailers in the opening credits of the competitions naturally revolved around the theme of Mexico, as the Central American film was the special focus of Annecy 2023e. As always, hundreds of paper airplanes from the cinema audience sailed onto the stage after the screening of "Le Lapin". Every plane that reached the screen received thunderous applause. Just one of the little things that make the Annecy Festival of Animated Film so familiar and endearing, despite its size!
Mexico, the so-called "host country" of this year's event in Annecy, France, is synonymous with imaginative, artistically sophisticated and particularly macabre short and feature-length films. Many young Mexican animation artists enriched the Annecy festival this year with trailers and short films. The well-known animated film director Jorge R. Gutierrez ("Maya and the Three"), whose works are anchored in popular Mexican art, also designed the festival poster for this year's event, which could be seen as a normal poster and an animated poster. Gutierrez says of his poster design: "My work is inspired by all the spectacular night parties of our beloved Annecy Festival. In addition, the two upcoming Mexican feature films "Frankelda y el príncipe de los sustos" and "Batman Azteca: choc de imperios" were covered in the "Work-in-Progress" series. "This is very important for a country that cannot produce very many films for various reasons," commented festival director Marcel Jean.
For current reasons, Ukrainian animated film was also the focus of the festival this time. 5 TV series were screened as part of the "Animation in Ukraine now!" program. One of the series is based on the Ukrainian feature film "Mavka", which was also successful in France and was also shown in Annecy's open-air cinema. The film by Oleg Malamuzh and Oleksandra Ruban, produced in a Ukrainian bomb shelter, is already the most successful film of all time there with over 1 million moviegoers! It will also be released in cinemas in Germany in September - under the title "Mavka - Guardian of the Forest."
Many popular highlights and German VR expertise
Annecy also offered many successful surprises. The evening and night program not only featured official cinema screenings, but also a special program for up to 8,000 viewers a day in front of the huge open-air screen by the lake (with highlights such as Disney's animated film "Fantasia 2000" and Guillermo del Torro's new "Pinocchio" stop motion cinema film). The latest Pixar film "Elemental" also celebrated its premiere. Like almost all majors including DreamWorks, the studio is focusing on production in 3D CGI.
Events on the new animated "Lord of the Rings" feature ("War of the Rohirrim") and the new "Chicken Run" animated feature from Aardman Animation ("News on Netflix"), which is eagerly awaited by all animation fans, were booked out in record time right at the start of the festival. For both upcoming blockbusters, production managers showed parts of the concept and the first completed excerpts from the features. The "Lord of the Rings" animated film (set in the Middle-earth land of Rohan a few hundred years before the HdR trilogy) centered around main character Helm Hammerhand was presented by Philippa Boyens (screenplay - also used in Peter Jackson's legendary films) together with director Kenji Kamiyama. For Aardman's new claymation work, Aardman boss Peter Lord and director Sam Fell himself stood on the stage of the Bonlieu Theater. Both events showed impressive images of the "making of" and whetted the appetite for more.
Numerous German entries were screened in the various sections and competitions of the Annecy Festival. This time, "11" by Vuk Jevremovic, "Das feine Zirpen einer Dunkelziffer" by Vera Sebert, "Baikal See" by Alisi Telengut and "Prinzessin Aubergine" by Dina Velikovskaja entered the race for the numerous Annecy Awards for short film. In the "Student Films" competition, Yi Luo competed with "Dodo" and Tim Markgraf with "Makulatour". Pedro Harres demonstrated German innovation in the "VR Applications" category with "From The Main Square". The VR applications were given a separate, quiet area in the Bonlieu Center - the heart of the festival - so that visitors could immerse themselves in new worlds undisturbed with VR glasses.
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German innovation in a VR project that won a major award in Annecy:
In the application, the viewer (wearing VR goggles) sits in a central square in the middle of a place where exciting events are experienced all around in a 2D cartoon environment until the sun goes down.
Germany was also represented in the feature film section: "The Siren" by Sepideh Farsi with participation from Studio Lutterbeck/ Matthias Bruhn (DE/ BEL/ FR) carried many hopes for a "Kristall" win. In addition, "Johnny and me" by Katrin Rothe (DE/AT/CH) was also in competition with international rivals in the Contrechamp section. Other German productions were presented as "work in progress" projects: The feature-length film "Sultana's Dream" by Isabel Herguera and the extended reality film "Emperor" by Marion Burger and Ilan Cohen. Hopes for major awards were somewhat dashed, however, as only the feature "The Siren" and the VR application "From the Main Square" were ultimately awarded prizes. Nevertheless, the creatives are hoping for success and sales on the international market. The German filmmakers are being supported by German Films and AG Kurzfilm, who are working hard to support German filmmaking.
German joint stand and MIFA trade fair
The impressive MIFA Animated Film Fair, set up at the Hotel Imperial right on the shores of Lake Annecy, had grown once again compared to 2022 and this time offered space for over 600 exhibitors and 6410 professionals from the participating countries. "Annecy is a unique event in the world, as it encompasses the entire animation process and all genres and styles," said MIFA Director Véronique Encrenaz, describing the event. "There are also many animation film schools attending: This year, 3,600 students are among the more than 15,000 accredited. We show new technologies, because of course you need tools in animation! Producers, distributors and channels are coming, and of course there will be plenty of films shown."
Awards for films with in-depth content and design
The "Crystal" for feature film went to the hand-drawn 2D animated film "Chicken for Linda" by Chiara Malta and Sébastien Laudenbach, which tells a bittersweet mother-daughter story in a very original drawing style.
The Hungarian feature-length animated film "Four Souls of Coyote" by Hungarian director Aron Gauder deals with the diverse themes of "historical and religious roots, diversity and the human war with nature" in the context of "indigenous coexistence with an intact environment". It is therefore obvious that the Annecy jury could not ignore this film and awarded it its feature prize.
The Audience Award for Feature Film went to the animated film "Sirocco and the Kingdom of Airstreams" by French director Benoît Chieux. In this adventurous story, two sisters get lost in their favorite book via a secret passage. Transformed into cat form, they now have to find their way back home with the help of a singer. In the process, they are repeatedly confronted by Sirocco, the lord of the winds and storms.
The most important prize in Annecy is always the crystal for the best short film. This time, too, the jury selected an artistically sophisticated animated film, which was also very well received by the audience: The very erotic short "27". This 2D film by French artist Anna Buda visualizes the thoughts of a 27-year-old who, like many of her Western generation, still lives at home in "Hotel Mama". However, she longs for adventure and the "real" life and escapes into exciting daydreams.
The audience in Annecy itself had a keen sense for contemporary themes and special artistic realization. They honored the short film "Nun or Never" (Heta Jäälinola/Finland) with the Audience Award. This is also about escaping from everyday life, this time to a monastery. This film shows that the monastery is also about giving and taking and about many human sensitivities (from which one cannot really escape).
The Annecy audience particularly loved a bitterly funny animated short film, which often left viewers not knowing whether to cry or laugh. In the Dutch animated film "Drijf", a couple goes on a nudist paddle trip at sea to watch dolphins. It becomes a long odyssey for the two, who test the limits of their relationship and really get to know each other. Dutch filmmaker Levi Stoops won the Audience Award for Short Film.
Nevertheless, there were two German successes to celebrate at the awards ceremony. The feature-length film "The Siren", set in the Iran/Iraq war and featuring Studio Lutterbeck, was fundamentally convincing in terms of story and visual realization, but was honoured by the jury for its outstanding film music. Finally, Pedro Harres from Berlin also received a special Annecy prize for outstanding VR application for his special drawing style, content and animation. In "From the main Square", guests wearing VR goggles immerse themselves in a place surrounded by mountains (drawn in cartoon style) and experience a day from sunrise to nightfall on the central square, taking part in the diverse events of its surroundings. Director Pedro Harres, a Brazilian living in Germany, on his work: "The project is a result of my living in Berlin for four years, in which I can now look at my native Brazil from a certain distance. The action in the VR environment is a collage of metropolitan absurdities that are sometimes funny, but can also become brutal. A mirror of social differences in political polarization and a collapse of the homely environment. The project is realized in the drawing style of Daniel Eizirik. Samuel Patthey and Sophia Schönborn did the animation. It's my VR debut and I'm very happy that this project has already won awards at the Venice Film Festival and now here in Annecy!"
At the end of the festival, Marcel Jean urged us to remain progressive and rethink the topic of animated film: "Cinema in general and animated film in particular are changing! Especially here in Annecy, we must keep our finger on the pulse of the influence of the progressive development of technologies, the stability of which is essential for artistic production and its economic distribution. This is the place where we must collect and exhibit the artistic results of the often dramatic and economic changes that drive the animation industry. It is here, where we have a special view of the history and tradition of animated film and its current production and presentation, that we must answer this simple question: What is animation today?"
Text: Jürgen Keuneke
If you enjoyed this article, please take a look at one of our other articles on competitions. For example, how about "The ADC Festival 2023 at a glance"
