It’s spring, which means film festival season is in full swing! Canada’s next stop is the Annecy International Animation Film Festival, which happens from June 10 to 15, 2019 in the French city of the same name, and its market component, Mifa, from June 11 to 14.
Canadians will be making waves at both the festival and market, with ten animated shorts plus Félix Dufour-Laperrière’s animated feature Ville Neuve selected for official competition!
But first, at Mifa, our fully-loaded Canada Pavilion will feature networking events with our Argentinian and French partners, and other countries too. More info on all these initiatives will be announced soon. As for the international networking events, they’re meant to help Canadian talent increase access to foreign financing by creating business opportunities to explore coproduction, coventures, presales, and more. And since Canada is big on VR, we’ll also have some awesome animated virtual reality to sweep you off your feet at the new Canadian VR space (stand 6.010).
After its premiere at last year’s Venice Days, Félix Dufour-Laperrière’s black-and-white Ville Neuve is now a contender at Annecy. Animated from ink-on-paper drawings, the poetic feature is about an uncertain couple, set in Quebec during the 1990s, a time of uncertain politics and the referendum for independence.
And our short animated films that made the cut to compete in various sections at Annecy this year are:
- Bogdan Anifrani’s DiM
- Valerie Barnhart’s Girl in the Hallway (Fille dans le couloir)
- Pascal Blanchet and Rodolphe Saint-Gelais’ The Procession (Le Cortège)
- Daniel Gies and Neil Christopher’s Giant Bear (L’Ours polaire géant)
- Pierre Hébert’s But One Bird Sang Not (Mais un oiseau ne chantait pas)
- Regina Pessoa’s Tio Tomas (Uncle Thomas) (A Canada-France-Portugal coproduction).
- Alexandre Roy’s Jim Zipper
- Tigris Alt. Sadka’s Not Your Panda (A Canada-China coproduction)
- Christopher Strickler’s Bird Milk
- Sylvie Trouvé and Dale Hayward’s Bone Mother
Bonus: 1 Canadian VR project will also be competing:
- Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski’s GYMNASIA
Stay tuned for details and updates, and swing by the Canada Pavilion (Stand 4.D14) for all your networking needs!
