Annecy Film Festival: What is the future of animation?

Forget Cannes; for fans of animated films, the French city synonymous with cinema is Annecy, a beautiful jewel nestled between the lake that bears its name and the edge of the Alps. What is now the world’s largest animation film festival has been held here every June since the 1960s.

This year, the program includes 468 films, with major studio productions, short films and student thesis projects, premieres, previews and outdoor night screenings. Exclusive film demonstrations and a “pride and diversity” program are also scheduled for this year.

But this year, the opening of the festival was overshadowed by a bloody knife attack on children in the town of Annecy. As it became clear that the incident was isolated and after consultation with the authorities and the mayor of Annecy, the festival officially opened as planned on 11 June.

As a sign of support for the victims of the knife attack, organizers decided to postpone the start of the outdoor screenings until 12 June. According to the press release, “The festival’s screenings will be held under the banner of the values ​​it has always stood for: Community, Solidarity and Fraternity.”

More animated films around the world

“More and more feature films are being produced, their quality is increasing and their origins are more diverse,” Marcel Jean, artistic director of the festival, told DW. And that is reflected in this year’s official festival selection, which includes films from Cameroon, Jordan, Denmark, Hungary, Japan, Canada, China and many more countries.

“This year, the focus of the festival is on Mexican animation films”, explains Marcel Jean. “Everyone knows Guillermo del Toro and Jorge R. Gutierrez, but what do people really know about Mexican animation cinema?” the festival website explains.

Festival-goers will be able to see countless new and old Mexican films. Guillermo del Toro will also be in attendance. In addition, two feature films will be shown in the work-in-progress category: “Frankelda y el principe de los sustos” and “Batman Azteca: choc de imperios”.

“This is very significant for a country that doesn’t produce many films”, says Jean.

Another country that is represented this year with a larger selection of films is Hungary. Four Hungarian films compete in the two feature film categories. Among them is “Toldi,” a film by pioneering animator Marcell Jankovics, who died last year.

‘3D mainly produced by big studios’

“A quick look at the 23 feature films in the official competition shows that the majority are produced in 2D and that stop-motion is well represented”, observes Jean. “3D remains the preferred technique of the big studios” – like DreamWorks, Disney and Pixar. Indie filmmakers working on smaller budgets continue to prefer 2D animation, which remains affordable due to available resources, she adds.

One film from the program stands out in this respect: the Ukrainian 3D film “Mavka: Guardian of the Forest”. It was made during the war in Ukraine and was produced in an air raid shelter.

In its Ukrainian homeland, the animated film by Oleg Malamuzh and Oleksandra Ruban has already attracted more than a million viewers to cinemas and is the most successful Ukrainian film of all time. In Germany, it is scheduled for release in September.

The future of animation cinema

In addition to competition and screenings, the Annecy Film Festival is also the largest international market for animated films. To that end, it will deliver presentations on topics that will evolve rapidly in the animation industry in the coming years, including real-time animation, AI and other new technologies.

Virtual reality will feature in the festival’s lecture series and even has its own category in the competition. The virtual reality journeys will allow viewers to enter the psyche of a mentally unstable artist, the complicated mind of an anti-abortionist who aborted her child or a British bomber pilot trying to destroy Gestapo headquarters during World War II.

The Annecy Film Festival runs until June 17, 2023.

This article was originally written in German.