For the subsequent seven days, the sleepy Alpine city of Annecy will probably be reworked into the worldwide hub of the worldwide animation business.
The Annecy Worldwide Animation Movie Competition (June 8-14), began as a bi-annual occasion for animation superfans, has change into a must-attend for the most important names within the business — the animation divisions of Netflix, Disney/Pixar, Warner Bros., DreamWorks, Sony and Paramount will all be represented — alongside the slicing fringe of the worldwide indie business. Two of final yr’s Annecy winners — Gints Zilbalodis’ Latvian function Circulate, and Adam Elliot’s Australian claymation drama Memoir of a Snail — have been 2025 Oscar nominees, with Circulate changing into the primary impartial movie to win the Academy Award for finest animated function.
“Every thing is getting larger and greater, increasingly more, yearly,” Marcel Jean, Annecy creative director tells The Hollywood Reporter. “Yearly, the pageant is extra vital, the Annecy animation market, Mifa is extra vital. We’ve change into the core of the calendar of animation exercise worldwide.”
Annecy attendees will get a primary have a look at this yr’s greatest upcoming animated options and sequence, together with Disney Animation’s Zootopia 2 and Pixar‘s Elio; Netflix’s Mounted and its Stranger Issues animation sequence; Dreamworks’ Unhealthy Guys 2 and Sony Footage Animation’s basketball-themed Goat. Warner Bros. Animation will exhibit the very best of its TV slate in a twenty fifth anniversary celebration of Cartoon Community Studios and a particular presentation for WB’s Grownup Swim. The previous will embody a panel of Cartoon Community luminaries: Genndy Tartakovsky (Samurai Jack), Craig McCracken (The Powerpuff Ladies), Pendleton Ward (Journey Time), Rebecca Sugar (Steven Universe), J.G. Quintel (Common Present), Adam Muto (Journey Time: Fionna and Cake); the latter highlights of Grownup Swim’s upcoming slate, together with the brand new season of hit sequence Smiling Pals, introduced at Annecy final yr.
‘Smiling Pals’
Courtesy of Grownup Swim
Simpsons creator Matt Groening will take the stage at Annecy, alongside govt producer and showrunner Matt Selman and producer David Silverman for a session on the present’s groundbreaking legacy, with Groening additionally receiving an Honorary Cristal lifetime achievement award from the pageant for his “distinctive contribution to animation.”
On the indie aspect, Andy Serkis will current his new animated adaptation of George Orwell’s Animal Farm, that includes the voice skills of Seth Rogen, Woody Harrelson and Kieran Culkin, which Goodfellas is promoting internationally. French auteur Michel Gondry (The Science of Sleep, Everlasting Sunshine of the Spotless Thoughts), a first-time Annecy attendee, will obtain a Honorary Cristal, as will British animator Joanna Quinn (Ladies’ Night time Out, Well-known Fred).
“We love large studio productions, and we love small experimental movies. If it’s nice animation and we adore it, we’ll showcase it on the pageant or the market,” says Annecy Competition CEO Mickaël Marin. “12 months after yr, we will see, at Annecy, the evolution of the animation business worldwide, with new nations, new skills rising.”
The pageant’s competitors lineup, typical for Annecy, is actually international, from Zhong Ding’s big-budget Chinese language function Into the Mortal World to Sylvain Chomet’s A Magnificent Life — an animated biopic of pioneering French filmmaker Marcel Pagnol — to Yasuhiro Aoki’s Japanese anime ChaO and Maïlys Vallade and Liane-Cho Han’s Little Amélie or the Character of Rain, each of which have been snatched up by Gkids for North America simply forward of the pageant.
‘A Magnificent Life’
Sony Footage Classics
“We see it as our accountability to show the entire state of the world of animation,” says Jean, “to have a look at what’s occurring within the animation world, and to strive a take a Polaroid of that, each the most important, most spectacular works but in addition probably the most distinctive, and the movies that mirror the developments, the preoccupations and the matters which can be most vital for animation creators.”
“If we solely chosen the very greatest movies, we’d all the time have the identical nations represented,” notes Mifa head Véronique Encrenaz. “However on the pageant and the market, we act as a laboratory, working with skills from nations all world wide to develop their skills and their industries. And, yr by yr, they develop. So this yr, we’ve got rising African nations at Mifa. For the primary time, we’ve got a Nigerian function [Shofela Coker’s Crocodile Dance] within the business part Mifa Pitches, we’ve got rising nations like Vietnam and ones from South America, from Asia, which can be investing increasingly more in animation.”
The pageant’s fortieth version will even pay tribute to Hungarian animation, highlighting the nation’s wealthy animated historical past, with screenings of classics together with Cristal winners Heroic Instances (1982) by József Gémes, and The District! (2005) from Áron Gauder.
This yr’s Work in Progress showcase – all the time probably the most fashionable sidebars at any version of the fest – will function early appears to be like at such options as Carmen from Rooster for Linda! director Sébastien Laudenbach; Alessandro Carloni and Erica Rivinoja’s The Cat within the Hat adaptation for Warner Bros. Footage Animation (that includes Invoice Hader) and Olivier Clert and Jean-Christophe Dessaint’s Lucy Misplaced from French studio Xilam. On the sequence aspect, Annecy’s works in progress will function Netflix’s upcoming Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Deathwatch; Grownup Swim’s Ladies Sporting Shoulder Pads and Get Jiro!, and the French sequence Bitches from director Manon Tacconi.