Rocco Ritchie (pictured on the left), the son of Madonna and director Guy Ritchie, is all grown up and doing a rare red carpet appearance!
12.06.2022 - 23:47 / variety.com
Ben Croll For the past six years the Annecy Animation Film Festival has looked to entrench VR producers within the global animation community.After launching a dedicated showcase in 2016, introducing a full-on competition in 2019, and keeping the VR component active for two years of hybrid and online-only editions, this year’s return to full force will spotlight eight VR projects in competition, alongside three work-in-progress screenings, a pitch session, and a series of wide-ranging conferences dedicated to future of the medium.“Our program reflects the diversity and richness of VR today,” says XR program head Arnaud Miquel. “Annecy has always been a place of experimentation, and from the moment artists take hold of this medium to do something new, we want to support them and give them visibility.” On the competition side, Jean Bouthors’ scripted short “Kidnapped in Vostok” and Rosa Schillaci’s immersive doc “Affiorare” will world premiere in Annecy, joining lauded projects like Hsin-Chien Huang’s “Samsara,” Benjamin Steiger Levine’s “Marco & Polo Go Round,” and Benjamin Cleary & Michael O’Connor’s “Glimpse” in a tight selection with a clear criteria.“We can consider live action, but there must be a contribution from animation in the artistic development of the work,” Miquel explains.
“Even the more experimental titles remain narrative. They share a purpose and are more than interactive games.”A similarly ontological concern lies at the center of this year’s bulked up industry program, which looks to bolster and enshrine the animated VR film as a viable standalone medium.“Animated VR is at the crossroads of the extremely popular and lucrative industries of animation and video games,” says Miquel.
Rocco Ritchie (pictured on the left), the son of Madonna and director Guy Ritchie, is all grown up and doing a rare red carpet appearance!
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.
Ben Croll Preschool fare and short-form docs ruled the roost at this year’s MIFA TV pitch session, with more than half the projects boasting episodes running under eight minutes in length, and nearly just as many titles aimed at the under-five crowd.Of the nine projects pitched, the preschool series “Yukon: The Space Botanist” (pictured) received the most vocal reception, drawing hearty laughs from a room full of buyers and commissioning editors at least three decades older than the show’s intended audience. Produced by Norway’s Imaginær Film, the 3D animated series gives computer graphics a tactile polish, featuring characters surfaced to resemble plastic figurines and background full of physical elements scanned in.
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.
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.
John Hopewell Chief International CorrespondentWarner Discovery came out at Annecy all three studios firing, Cartoon Network Studios, Warner Bros. Animation and Hanna-Barbera Studios Europe making a joint presentation of their upcoming slates.The biggest news was an exclusive, multiyear cross-studio overall deal inked between Cartoon Network Studios and Warner Bros.
Ben Croll Beginning midday at the halfway mark of a weeklong expo, Netflix’s first ever animation showcase was in many ways the centerpiece event of this year’s Annecy Animation Film Festival.Over the course of a ninety-minute presentation hosted by Variety’s Peter Debruge, executives and creative teams previewed upcoming films and series from the streamer’s adult, family, and preschool divisions while directors Henry Selick and David Fincher beamed in with behind-the-scenes looks at projects “Wendell & Wild” and “Love, Death & Robots” released episode “Bad Travelling” and rapper Kid Cudi made a surprise appearance to boost his visual-album “Entergalactic.”And then Guillermo del Toro took the stage, receiving a hero’s greeting as he announced, “Animation is not a f—ng genre. Animation is film!” When the cheers died down, he world premiered eight minutes of footage, finished and unfinished, from his stop-motion fable about a wooden boy with a borrowed soul.
Lise Pedersen Disney will unveil a raft of new animated series productions Wednesday at the Annecy Intl. Animation Film Festival, and show sneak peeks of the upcoming slate of new original animated shows to air on Disney+ and other Disney-owned platforms in 2023 and beyond.Highlights include second season greenlights for hit Disney+ series “Monsters at Work” and “Chip ‘n’ Dale: Park Life,” and seasons three for “Marvel’s Spidey and his Amazing Friends” and “Mickey Mouse Funhouse.”Additional episode orders for some of Disney Television Animation’s upcoming series, including “Hamster & Gretel,” “Kiff,” “Hailey’s On It” and “Primos” will also be announced.“The announcements out of Annecy today further cement Disney as the leader in animation,” said Ayo Davis, president of Disney Branded Television.
Emilio Mayorga Spain’s Navarre will analyse a 40% tax deduction on R&D investment and other factors turning it into one of Spain’s fastest-building animation hubs at a June 15 panel, held at Annecy’s MIFA market.Located in northern Spain, Navarre currently has six animated features in development, two in production, one recently launched, and two shorts, according to Ana Herrera, audiovisual and digital projects manager at the Navarre Government. “For a community of 663,612 inhabitants, these are very stimulating statistics.,” Herrera said. Herrera went on to underscore the importance of the partnership between private companies and public institutions to boost the sector, which takes in several government areas – economy, employment, Navarre’s tax office and culture.
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.
Ben Croll Nearly two decades after the character broke out in “Shrek 2″ and 11 years since his last solo outing, Puss in Boots – that Antonio Banderas-voiced rapscallion who wields his saucer eyes as dangerously as he does his sword – made his swashbuckling return to the big screen at an Annecy Intl. Animation Film Festival presentation that saw the first 27 minutes of DreamWorks’ upcoming “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish” screen before a packed auditorium.Cheering before the opening song gave way to an action scene, the Annecy crowd greeted their feline friend with a pop idol’s welcome – neatly mirroring the energetic musical number happening on screen.“At the forefront of our minds was not just reintroducing Puss to the world, but introducing the world to where the character is now,” director Joel Crawford tells Variety.
Lise Pedersen An enthusiastic crowd took a sneak peek at Skydance Animation’s first feature length film, “Luck,” showcased as part of the Annecy International Animation Festival’s Work in Progress section on Tuesday.The panel was composed of the film’s director Peggy Holmes (“The Little Mermaid: Ariel’s Beginning,” “The Pirate Fairy”), screenwriter Kiel Murray (“Cars,” “Finding Nemo,” “Ratatouille”), producer David Eisenmann (“Pearl,” “Son of Jaguar”), director of animation Yuriko Senoo (“Tangled,” “The Pirate Fairy”) and VFX supervisor Javier Romero (“Wonder Park,” “Planet 51”).“Luck” tells the story of Sam Greenfield, probably the unluckiest girl in the world, who one day finds a lucky penny. She decides she wants to give the penny to her best friend Hazel, but her bad luck means she loses the coin.
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.
Lise Pedersen Speaking on Monday at the 6th Women in Animation (WIA) Summit at the Annecy Animation Festival, Chris Mack, director, Grow Creative at Netflix, addressed issues of labor shortage and inclusivity in the animation industry.“Never before in the history of person kind have we told these many stories, or pumped these many dollars into entertaining the world. The fact is we don’t have enough skilled talent to create and produce this content,” he announced.“There have never been so many opportunities,” he added, noting that his company has executives in some 15 countries, whose jobs are to create pipelines and tap into local talent pools, both new and established.“You need executives who look like the creator you want to work with, who understand cultural storytelling.