The jury is out on the feature-length animated films to be screened at this year’s Annecy festival in France. Nearly every continent is represented in the fest’s global sampler, as are all genres of our beloved craft.
Competing for the coveted Cristal this year are U.S. offerings Coraline by stop-motion maestro Henry Selick, 3-D B-movie farce Monsters vs. Aliens by Rob Letterman & Conrad Vernon, CG indie Battle for Terra by Aristomenis Tsirbas and the lyrical 2D piece My Dog Tulip by Paul and Sandra Fierlinger. Irish/French co-pro The Secret of Kells from Tomm Moore & Nora Twomey at Cartoon Saloon will offer fierce competition, as will Aussie auteur Adam Elliot’s Mary and Max.
These much gabbed about English language contenders will have to contend with action-packed anime Redline from Takeshi Koike (Japan), 3D effort Kurt Turns Evil by Rasmus Sivertsen (Norway), cut-out hit man adventure Boogie, el Aceitoso by Gustavo Cova (Argentina), and a mixed 2D/cut-out proverb from Korea called The Story of Mr. Sorry by In-keun Kwak, Il-hyun Kim, Ji-na Ryu, Eun-mi Lee and Hae-young Lee.
Out of Competition, On to Screens
Nine more films will screen outside the competition. Japan leads with three submissions: Five-segment anthology Genius Party Beyond by Mahiro Maeda, Kazuto Nakazawa, Shinya Ohira, Tatsuyuki Tanaka and Koji Morimoto; Ghost in the Shell 2.0 by Mamoru Oshii; and the buzzed-about Sword of the Stranger by Masahiro Ando.
Also on tap are cute 2D toons from Germany, Kay Delventhal & Eckart Fingberg’s Jasper and A Case for Friends’How It All Began (Mullewapp) by Tony Loeser & Jesper Moller [Germany]; and the zany CG offerings of Denmark: Sunshine Barry & the Disco Worms by Thomas Borch Nielsen, and Journey to Saturn from Craig Frank, Thorbjorn Christoffersen & Kresten Vestbjerg Andersen. Rounding out the selection are Israeli director Tatia Rosenthal’s stop-motion masterpiece $9.99 and a twisted puppet fairy tale from Canada by Neil Burns, Edison and Leo.
For more information, visit www.annecy.org or watch this site for further updates!
