Annecy’s ‘Nayola’ Explores the Struggles of Three Generations of Women in Angola

Zawe Ashton, Hayley Squires And Daniel Mays Land Leads In BBC Adaptation Of ‘Maryland’

Thania Garcia Mariachi singer Angela Aguilar has signed a worldwide deal with performance-rights organization SESAC Latina. The 18-year-old singer comes from a long line of mariachi and Mexican cinema royalty – including her father, the Grammy-award-winning mariachi singer-songwriter Pepe Aguilar; the late film star and master mariachi singer Antonio Aguilar; and her grandmother, the prolific Mexican singer and actress Flor Silvestre.Having made her singing debut in 2012 at the age of nine, the singer has only continued to gain recognition.

Neil Young has announced his plans to release ‘Noise & Flowers’, a live album and film compiled from material recorded during his most recent tour of Europe and the UK.Young embarked on the nine-date run with Promise Of The Real as his backing band, taking in four shows in Germany – as well as one each in Denmark, Belgium, the Netherlands, England and Ireland – across July of 2019. The album and film will feature recordings from all of the shows; the CD and two-disc vinyl release will sport 14 tracks, but it’s unclear if the film (which was co-directed by Bernard Shakey and DH Lovelife) contains the same content.Both iterations of the release will land on August 5 via Warner Records, with pre-orders available here.

Liam and Noel Gallagher reportedly “got on like a house on fire” when they both attended a party at George Michael’s house three years after Oasis split.The brothers’ band infamously broke up backstage at a festival in France in 2009, and the pair have been embroiled in a feud ever since.According to Michael’s friend and collaborator David Austin, though, an unplanned meeting between the brothers at the late pop icon’s house was very “amicable”.Austin said that Michael held a party at his north London home after performing at the 2012 Olympics and Liam “just kind of rocked up”.“I think he was with Beady Eye at the time,” he said at a screening of the new George Michael Freedom Uncut documentary, per Radio X. “They came to the house and there was a bit of hoo-ha because Noel was there and they hadn’t seen each other for quite a while.

Variety watches the shorts in Annecy’s main competition selection and picks 10 of our favorites. We’re not saying these are the best 10 shorts this year, though four won prizes, but we believe each brings something that shouldn’t be missed.“Anxious Body,” (Yoriko Mizushiri, France, Japan)Screening at Cannes Directors’ Fortnight, Mizushiri’s fourth short and the first project co-produced by Japanese New Deer and France’s Miyu Productions.

Directors Amandine Fredon and Benjamin Massoubre take home the top prize for their animated film Little Nicholas–Happy as Can Be at the annual Annecy International Animation Film Festival in France. 

JD Linville Swiss animator and director Raphaëlle Stolz (“Le Salsifis du Bengale”) has debuted her new short film “Miracasas” at Annecy, where it is in competition with 37 other animated short films as part of the official selection.Stolz employs a flowing and impressionist animation style to tell the story of Ernesto, an almost-dead soldier carried to his final destination deep in the Brazilian jungle, where villagers hope his death will usher in new life. The film is a French and Swiss co production between Nadasy Film, a prominent Swiss animation studio, Komadoli Studio and Swiss public broadcaster RTS Radio Télévision Suisse.Showing a gift for collaboration (her short “Le Salsifis du Bengale” was an adaptation of a Robert Desnos poem), Stolz interprets and transforms Augusto Zanovello’s story with her singular style, with wide brush strokes, clever humor and a nod to classic animation.

Peter Debruge Chief Film CriticBelgian graphic artist Laurent Durieux has designed some of the most gorgeous movie posters of the past decade, working not for the studios but in custom-published runs just for collectors and fans. You’ve probably seen his work: intricate, finely tooled reimaginings of classic films — “Jaws,” “King Kong” and “Casablanca,” to name a few — produced as limited-edition screenprints by companies such as Mondo, resold on eBay for thousands of dollars.Durieux’s retrofuturist designs have appeared on everything from bottles of Francis Ford Coppola’s wine to the cover of The New Yorker.

Lise Pedersen France’s animation industry is thriving, according to the latest figures published by the country’s national film center, the CNC (Centre National du Cinéma et de l’Image Animée), during the Annecy Intl. Animation Film Festival.The country’s animation production levels in 2021 were the second highest ever, at 357 hours of programs, surpassed only by 2006, which reported 395 hours.French animation, whose long-established reputation of excellence and know-how has been a draw for international co-productions for decades, has proved increasingly attractive to international co-productions thanks to its generous tax rebate for international projects, which was revised upwards from 20% to 30% of spend in 2015.

EXCLUSIVE: London and Paris-based production and sales company Film Constellation has inked pre-sales on family adventure animation The Last Dinosaur following its Cannes market launch.

EXCLUSIVE: On the heels of us revealing their Katy Perry animated musical Melody, The Trial Of The Chicago 7 and The Pale Blue Eye outfit Cross Creek Pictures and animation specialist Zag have set an agreement to develop and produce a slate of ten animated, live-action and hybrid format features, the majority of which will be musicals.

Lise Pedersen Six teams of budding animation professionals have pitched their projects at the Annecy Intl. Animation Film Festival as part of a new mentoring program for women from France and Africa launched by Les Femmes s’Animent (LFA), an organization that supports women in animation.The aim of the initiative, entitled “A Woman’s Journey,” is to help women who want to create short animated films but are not part of, nor have access to, the animation industry.

Ben Croll Inaugurated in 2021, the Annecy Residency program takes three selected projects on a six-month journey, beginning with a three-month script workshop before moving to Annecy’s Papeteries Image Factory for a similar bout of tailored mentorships and visual experimentation. At the end, the filmmakers launch their development titles at the MIFA market.When directors Pierre Le Couviour and Amine El Ouarti brought their residency-honed title “Le Cœur à danser” to last year’s MIFA, they very quickly found an eager partner in French studio Vivement Lundi, teaming with the Rennes-based production to develop the project even further.

Marta Balaga France’s Annecy Intl. Animation Film Festival is celebrating Swiss animation – which marked its 100th anniversary back in 2021 – with a slew of retrospectives, screenings and special events.In its Official Selection, Switzerland is represented through 13 films spread across different sections.

John Hopewell Chief International CorrespondentAnnecy this year is all about innovation, in animation  style – seen in the villain of “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse,” unveiled on Monday – in Europe’s push into adult animation, and even in new ways of connecting with audiences, as DreamWorks Animation has demonstrated in a joyous and packed open air screening of “The Bad Guys.”A tradition at Annecy, the lakeside outdoor events usually serve to introduce new generations of Annecy kids and families to modern animation classics. Under Marcel Jean’s artistic direction, these are becoming ever more recent.

Emilio Mayorga “Unicorn Wars” (Alberto Vázquez)Alberto Vázquez, the director of “Birdboy: The Forgotten Children,” a Gkids pickup for North America, delivers an apocalyptic anti-war parable narrating the ancestral war between teddy bears bigots and environmentalist unicorns with irreverent visual exuberance and moments of real horror.WIP’S“They Shot the Piano Player” (Fernando Trueba and Javier Mariscal)Trueba and Mariscal’s much-awaited new collaboration after their 2012 Oscar-nominated “Chico & Rita” is a co-production with France, Portugal, the Netherlands and Peru. Sold by Film Constellation, project threads “music, politics and documentary as well as fiction, thriller and memory,” Trueba has said.

John Hopewell Chief International CorrespondentFortified by top executive appointments, London-based Academy Award winning Passion Pictures is driving powerfully into long-form animation.It has already produced episodes of cult Netflix series “Love, Death & Robots” – “Life Hatch” and “Ice,” which scored three Emmy Awards – as well as Netflix’s “Headspace,” Disney’s “101 Dalmatian Street” and Nickelodeon’s “Lego City Adventures.”Building on that, Passion will unveil two new projects, “Greetings from the Apocalypse” and “Love,” at the MIFA TV Series & Specials Pitches on June 16. Passion is the only company to have two titles in this category which currently packs a lot of the excitement and innovation at the cutting edge of current animation.