Among the films in competition, the juries have the sensitive mission of determining the Official Awards, including the Cristal for a Short Film and the Cristal for a Feature Film, and the Special Awards.
Discover the jury members for the 2021 edition’s awards.
Founder of Lobster Films in 1985, producer, animator, pianist, industrialist, film restorer, film historian, a great collector and sharer of images, Serge Bromberg – artistic director of the Annecy Festival for almost 15 years – dedicates his life to sharing films from yesteryear to the current-day. To name but a few of his roles, he is a director (César winner), administrator of the Cinémathèque française and LaCinetek, and president of the ECPAD (the French Defense Audiovisual Agency). But life is too short for this inquisitive movie connoisseur!
After studying figure drawing, Rémi Chayé works as an illustrator for several years. By chance, he discovers cartoon drawing and trains as a storyboarder and layout man. In 2003, he joins La Poudrière, an animation film school, then becomes storyboarder and assistant director on several feature films. He directs and is the graphic author of his first production Long Way North (2016). With a large part of the same team, he returns in 2020 with Calamity, a Childhood of Martha Jane Cannary.
Caroline Vié, film journalist for the daily magazine 20 Minutes, is passionate about animation. She has also published three novels: Brioche and Dépendance Day, published by JC Lattès, as well as Ni tout à fait une autre, published by Les Escales.
Maja Gehrig is an animation filmmaker and teacher based in Zurich. Her short animation films use a wide range of techniques and have gained international recognition. Her latest work Average Happiness won several prizes at different festivals and won Best Swiss Animation in 2020. Besides making her own films, she teaches at Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts on the BA Animation course. Together with Elie Chapuis, she is co-president of the ASIFA Switzerland (GSFA).
Christophe Heral has composed music for animation films, video games, television programmes, the radio, etc. Let’s name a few, A Mouse’s Tale (Renner), La Douce (Larricq), Peripheria (Coquard-Dassault), Bach-Hông (Duhamel), Black Mor’s Island (Laguionie), Eleanor’s Secret (Monfery), The Prince’s Voyage (Laguionie/Picard), credits of Court-circuit (Arte), as well as Beyond Good and Evil (BGE), The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn, Rayman Origins and Rayman Legends (Ubisoft games). He is working on Wild, BGE2 and the next feature by Xavier Picard, Marie-Louise, ma petite princesse.
Born in 1984, Jean-Charles Mbotti Malolo graduated from the École Émile Cohl in 2007, with compliments from the jury. The Heart is a Metronome won the Best First Film Award at the Hiroshima Festival in 2008. In 2012, he wrote and directed The Sense of Touch. Combining the beauty of dance and sign language, the work receives more than 20 international awards out of more than 60 official festival selections. Nominated for the César for Best Animated Short Film 2020, his latest film Make It Soul pays tribute to black American music. Jean-Charles co-designed the Annecy 2020 poster, and created the 2021 poster.
Managing Director of the Fondation Gan pour le cinéma
Born in Montevideo (Uruguay) into a family of musicians, Florencia Di Concilio studied music at the New England Conservatory, Boston. Based in Paris, she produced the original scores of some forty films for cinema and TV, many winning prizes at internationally renowned festivals, including the original score for Calamity, a Childhood of Martha Jane Cannary, by Rémi Chayé, the 2020 Annecy Festival Cristal Award-winner, for which she was nominated for the 2021 Lumières Awards and won the Best Music Award at the Bucheon Festival. Hailed by the international press, Florencia is one of the most prolific and eclectic artists of the new generation of composers.
Born in Annecy, Louise Garcia develops her artistic expression at a very young age, notably via animation films – at 11 years old, she is a Junior Jury member at the Annecy Festival. In 2013, she turns to graphic design studies. In 2018, at the Kourtrajmé school, she writes her first screenplay and discovers the film industry. Currently, Louise is developing her short film and writing a documentary, a feature film with Ladj Ly, and several projects with her collective within the Iconoclast production company.
Éléa Gobbé-Mévellec joins GOBELINS, l'école de l'image in 2003. Her first short films, Madame and Escale, are selected at Annecy. She animates on shorts such as Bang Bang! by Julien Bisaro (César 2015 nomination), Smart Monkey by Vincent Paronnaud and Nicolas Pawlowski. Her career continues as a character animator for feature films such as Ernest & Celestine, The Rabbi’s Cat, The Day of the Crows, Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet and April and the Extraordinary World. In 2016, as a designer she collaborates in the series Lastman. In 2019, she codirects The Swallows of Kabul with Zabou Breitman.
Ghazala is a professor of animation and Chairman of the Cinematic Arts School at Effat University in Jeddah. Founder of the first chapter of the ASIFA in Africa, he is currently Vice President of the ASIFA. He has directed award-winning films including Honayn's Shoe, that won the Animation Prize at Africa Movie Academy Awards 2010. He has been guest professor at film schools and jury member for film and animation festivals. He has written two books Animation in Africa and Animation in the Arab World.
A graduate from EMCA, Angoulême, Adrien Mérigeau begins his career at Cartoon Saloon, Ireland, as set supervisor on Tomm Moore's The Secret of Kells. Adrien writes and directs his first short Old Fangs, premiering at the Sundance Film Festival, 2010. Artistic director on Song of the Sea by Tomm Moore, he then moves to Paris to direct the short Genius Loci, produced by Kazak Productions, which wins the Audi Award at the 2020 Berlinale and receives a 2021 Oscar nomination. Adrien is currently working on a short commissioned for the American FX series Cake.
Soetkin Verstegen is an independent filmmaker and animator from Brussels. Her films Mr Sand (2016) and Freeze Frame (2019) travelled to numerous festivals and received jury awards at Clermont-Ferrand, Ann Arbor, Annecy, Fantoche and Animafest Zagreb. She was a fellow at Akademie Schloss Solitude, Germany, the Saari residency, Finland, the ZHdK's artists-in-labs, Switzerland, and at the ANIDOX:RESIDENCY, Denmark. She freelances as a stop-motion animator for Beast Animation, is experienced in giving workshops, and now teaches at LUCA School of Arts, Brussels.
Annemie Degryse graduated in animation film at KASK, Ghent (Belgium), in 1993. She has been working in animation since then as a distributor and producer. She is co-owner of the Lumiere Group, which includes 5 City Cinemas, an EST platform, theatrical distribution, production (TV & cinema), a tax shelter intermediate, a 2D animation studio and she is managing partner at Beast Animation. Producer of the series Ollie, and Bloomstreet 11, Cristal for a Short Film at Annecy 2018, co-producer on Josep, Funan, The Siren & Coppelia.
Naddya Adhiambo Oluoch-Olunya is an animation director and musician from Nairobi. For the past 12 years, she has relished the challenge of diving into a new story world, researching its histories, growing its palette and pushing graphic language to a place that only animation can go. With a practice spanning comics, animation and XR, she has collaborated with studios from all over the world under her Nalo Studios banner. Her list of clients includes Netflix Animation, Shujaaz.inc, Facebook, ZanaAfrica, and many more.
Artistic Director & Film Curator
Animateka International Animated Film Festival & Cinémathèque slovène
Slovenia
Igor Prassel was born in 1971, in the Slovenian coastal town, Koper. He has served as jury member at important international animation and short film festivals around the world. Since 2010, he has been lecturing on the history and theory of animation film at the Nova Gorica University. In 2012, the Slovenian Cinematheque published his book The Filmography of Slovenian Animated Film 1952-2012. Since 2018, he has been working as film curator at the Slovenian Cinematheque. In 2004, he founded the Animateka International Animated Film Festival, where he has been the artistic director ever since.
Carlos Gómez Salamanca is an audiovisual artist whose work focuses on painting and audiovisual languages. In recent years, he has been reconstructing images and visual archives to create animations that explore, from a critical perspective, different social and cultural aspects of his country. In 2013 he founded NOCROMA, a studio focused on the development and production of art projects, animation and more recently VR and new media. His recent works include Meat (2013), Lupus (selected at Annecy 2017), Yugo (in production) and Disposable (feature film in development).
Born in Tokyo in 1980, Momoko Seto came to France to study fine arts at the Marseille École Supérieure des Beaux-Arts and at the Fresnoy. She works at the French CNRS (National Centre of Scientific Research) as a director. She also works on personal experimental films combining different techniques to create an original and poetic world based on elements from everyday life. Momoko has directed many short films and documentaries that have been selected in several festivals worldwide and PLANET Σ received the Audi Short Film Award at the Berlinale 2015, a prize that rewards a work of high artistic signature.
A leading figure in animation film, Theodore Ushev received the Jutra for Best Short Animation Film and a Special Distinction at Annecy 2010 for Lipsett’s Diaries. He also made Blind Vaysha, which won the Jury Award as well as the Junior Jury Award for a Short Film at Annecy 2016, before being nominated at the Oscars. Lastly, The Physics of Sorrow was crowned by the Cristal for a Short Film and the FIPRESCI Award at the Annecy Festival 2020.
The jury for the Perspectives category comprises three residents from Dori, a town in Burkina Faso twinned with Annecy, and will present the City of Annecy Award.
The André-Martin Award jury members will award a French Short Film and a French Feature Film.
General Coordinator Les Arcs Film Festival
Director of L’Auditorium de Seynod – Annecy
Director of the Caravane des Cinémas d’Afrique Festival – Sainte Foy-lès-Lyon
This year, 7 members aged between 12 to 15 years old will make up the Junior Jury. The 4 youngsters from the Atelier de cinéma d’animation d’Annecy et de Haute-Savoie (aaa) will be joined by 3 youngsters from the African continent through different structures: the Institut français de Meknès (Morocco), the animation studio Afrikatoon (Ivory Coast) and the Collectif Génération Créative (Burkina Faso).
12 years old
aaa
France
12 years old
aaa
France
13 years old
Institut français de Meknès
Morocco
14 years old
aaa
France
14 years old
aaa
France
15 years old
Afrikatoon animation studio
Ivory Coast
14 years old
Collectif Génération Créative
Burkina Faso