Annecy Festival Unveils Official Selection Details, Juries

The Annecy International Animation Film Festival has revealed the first portion of the Official Selection in competition for the 2020 edition of the event as well as members of the juries.

The festival received more than 3,000 film submissions from 94 countries. Among the short films in competition are 37 films in the official and 12 in the off-limits category, 20 in the perspectives section and ten in the young audiences section. There are 44 competition graduation films, and 22 TV films and 35 commissioned films in competition. The list of feature films and VR works in the Official Selection will be announced mid-May.

The 2020 juries bestowing the Cristal awards for short films include Matt Kaszanek, director of Animation Is Film Festival in the U.S.; Naomi Van Niekerk, director of Dryfsand in South Africa; and French director Denis Walgenwitz. On the jury for graduation films and off-limits short films are Signe Baumane, Latvian director and producer of My Love Affair with Marriage; Jeanette Bonds, GLAS Animation festival co-founder and director and director and producer at B&B Pictures in the U.S.; and Thomas Renoldner, director and head of selection at Austria’s Animation Avantgarde at Vienna Shorts Filmfestival. Marco De Blois, artistic director for Canada’s Les Sommets du cinéma d’animation; Dahee Jeong, director and producer at Between The Pictures in South Korea; and Diane Launier, managing director of Art Ludique Le Musée in France, make up the TV and commissioned films jury.

Annecy 2020 will be a digital version from June 15 to 20.

Marcel Jean, artistic director for the festival, said: “On the whole, the 2020 Selection is less serious, and funnier, than the previous few years. We still find several films dealing with current themes, in particular ecology, migration and gender identity. Some films—Empty Places by Geoffroy de Crécy, The Physics of Sorrow by Theodore Ushev and Something to Remember by Niki Lindroth Von Bahr—even appear to anticipate the present situation.

“We are particularly proud of the quality and variety of the off-limits selection, which testifies to the vitality of experimental approaches. In addition, six of the twelve films from this section were directed by women, which represents the level of equity that characterizes the selection in the diverse categories of the short films. We are also thrilled with the diverse countries where the selected films come from, there are works from Iceland, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt and Indonesia, countries that are rarely represented at Annecy. The graduation films revealed a very high level of productions from the Lodz School in Poland, where three films from this educational institution were selected. Meanwhile, the programs destined for television indicate that this sector is going through a great era with so many audacious and ambitious productions targeted to diverse audiences.”