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FESTIVALS France

Annecy, capital of animation

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- The Haute-Savoie city is getting its fill of fine films this week, with 230 titles on the Festival menu and over 2,000 professionals at the Film Market

Annecy, capital of animation
The Art of Happiness by Alessandro Rak

An unmissable date for the world’s animation experts, the 38th edition of the Annecy International Animated Film Festival kicked off yesterday. Running until 14 June, the festival’s official selection, cooked up by artistic delegate Marcel Jean, will offer 230 works, ranging from feature films to shorts, via final-year student films and those made for television. And Wednesday will see the start of the three-day Mifa (International Animation Film Market), which has already signed up over 2,000 professionals.

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Standing out among the nine features in official competition are four European titles: The Art of Happiness [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Alessandro Rak
film profile
]
by Italian director Alessandro Rak (revealed at the Critics’ Week at Venice – read the review and the interview with the director), the animated documentary Last Hijack [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
by Femke Wolting and Tommy Pallotta (a co-production between Germany, Belgium, Ireland and the Netherlands), Lisa Limone & Maroc Orange, a Rapid Love Story by Estonia’s Mait Laas, and Minuscule – Valley of the Lost Ants [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
by French filmmakers Thomas Szabo and Hélène Giraud (a box-office smash in French cinemas, taking 1.42 million admissions).

Nestled in amongst the nine out-of-competition features, audiences will find the Spanish film Justin and the Knights of Valour [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
by Manuel Sicilia, Manieggs - Revenge of the Hard Egg [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
by Hungary’s Zoltan Miklosy and Beyond Beyond [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
by Danish director Esben Toft Jacobsen (co-produced by Sweden and presented at the Berlinale in the Generation Kplus section – read the article).

Also of note among the action-packed special programmes, there is a tribute to the late Czech director Bretislav Pojar, a focus on Croatian animated films, an examination of the work of the Estonian studio Nukufilm, a conference on the Aardman Animations studio (to be attended by Peter Lord) and a Work in Progress look at Astérix: le Domaine des dieux by Louis Clichy and Alexandre Astier.

At the core of the myriad events organised at the Mifa, we should highlight the pitching session for projects at the very beginning of their development process. Notable titles in this selection include Mysi patri do nebe by Denisa Grimmova and Noro Drziak (a German-Czech co-production, for which Alice Nellis wrote the screenplay), and Tombés du nid by France’s Cédric Lachenaud.

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(Translated from French)

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