Archives 2017
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The Annecy Festival and the Mifa have continued their spectacular progression, even breaking all records in 2017 with 10,000 pass-holders!
The International Animation Film Festival (June 12 to 17, 2017)
This year’s 2017 Annecy Festival has once again proven to be a big player, opening its doors yearly to ever greater throngs of professionals, students and animation aficionados. 10,000 accredited badge-holders, hailing from 87 countries, partook of the festivities. In like manner, the number of submitted films continued to grow, up to 2,850 this year, among which 230 were short-listed to compete in the official selection.
Huge crowds attended the different screenings of the nine competing feature films. In the end it was Lu Over the Wall, the Japanese film by Masaaki Yuasa, which walked away with the Cristal for a Feature Film. Never "short-sighted", the Cristal for a Short Film went to Niki Lindroth Von Bahr for her film The Burden (Min Börda).
The Festival this year paid special honors to Guest Country China, strongly represented at the Mifa by a 183m² national pavilion with 130 participants. In addition, there were numerous special programs offered on Chinese animation from the 1950s to today, including the cream of short-film crops from Chinese schools. An outstanding exhibit entitled La Chine en mouvement topped off this homage, showcasing a number of Chinese artists and including a performance during the week by Sun Xun.
In parallel, Erotic Animation was feted this year, with its unique programming sculpted for restricted audiences!
As in the past, the heroes of the Screening Events once again won their audiences over. This was the case for the zombies of Zombillenium, the Festival’s opening film; the beasties of Tall Tales from the Garden of Antoon Krings, of The Jungle Bunch, or of The Big Bad Fox and Other Tales; and it was true for the medley of superheroes of Captain Underpants, Mutafukaz, COCO, Lost & fOUnd and Blame!.
A great many eagerly-awaited celebrities graced the red carpet too, such as: Guillermo del Toro, back for the second year running, Go Nagai, the daddy of Goldorak aka Grandizer, Carlos Saldanha, Joann Sfar, Jean-Pierre Jeunet, musicians Mat Bastard and The Toxic Avenger as well as actor Douglas Booth. Georges Schwizgebel, a key figure of Swiss animation, was there as well and his life’s work was crowned by the Festival’s Honorary Cristal.
As for innovations, the 2017 Annecy Festival started up two new short film categories, Young Audience and Perspectives which were respectively crowned by two new prizes: the Young Audience Award and the City of Annecy Award. Virtual reality, first launched at last year’s Festival, has now become a category of its own, part of the official selection: VR@Annecy.
Last but not least, the Festival announced that it would be rolling out its “Annecy” brand internationally, particularly with the creation of The Annecy Asia International Animated Film Festival in Seoul and the launch of Animation is Film in Los Angeles, partnering Variety, GKIDS and Annecy.
If you weren’t on hand for this year’s edition, you can still enjoy the best of it, on line!
- The entire official selection list is posted there: feature films, short films, commissioned films, young audience choices…
- Discover everything beloved by the Annecy locals: screening events, open-air screenings…
- All the prize-winning films are online (see 2017 Annecy Awards), and all the jury members are also listed there
- To relive the 2017 Festival on a day to day basis, check out Annecy Live
- And to follow the entire event in pictures, admire the official photos on Flickr or watch the videos on our YouTube channel.
Get ready, because the Annecy International Animated Film is cordially inviting you to its next rendezvous: June 11 to 16, 2018. That’s when Brazilian animation will be in the limelight, as well as Music and animation!
The International Animation Film Market (June 13 to 16, 2017)
While the Mifa has grown incessantly over the past ten years, this year is no exception. The 2017 event assembled 3,000 pass-holders (+9%), 1,400 companies (+200), 430 buyers, distributors and investors (+16%) and 74 countries.
To comfortably accommodate the yearly increase of badge-holders, the Annecy International Animation Film Market kept in step. For this year’s market, Mifa’s floor space was expanded to 6,000 m² with a new upstairs space. Its duration, too, was extended by an extra day.
Among recent innovations, there was the launch of Mifa Campus, a special day designed for students and young talents to meet with pros from the industry. For this inaugural year, Guillermo del Toro was the sponsor.
On the job hiring front, 2017 was a vintage year as well, with over 900 candidates (compared to 600 in 2016) applying for positions with top international studios (Illumination Mac Guff, Pixar, Laika, ILM, Mikros Animation, Xilam and more). The Mifa Pitches were top-of-the-list too, with 345 projects vying for Mifa exposure, while the Animation du Monde pitches continued to win over ever-new territories.
Among the many Mifa pronouncements, the following milestones stand out:
- launch of an operation to boost European animation by Europe Créative
- commitments to numerous animated projects by such broadcasters as France Télévisions, Canal+, Lagardère Active and Disney Channel, among others
- SPFA’s positive review of 2016/2017 French production industry trends.
Last of all, like every year, the Mifa served as the perfect place for conferring the Mifa & Variety Personality of the Year Award. Following Aardman’s Peter Lord and David Sproxton in 2016, this year a duo of distributors received crowning honors: Marc Bonny from Gebeka Films and Eric Beckman from GKIDS.
Pull out your diaries and take note: the Annecy International Animation Film Market would love to welcome you again at next year’s event Tuesday June 12 to Friday June 15, 2018!
Meetings (from June 12 to 16, 2017)
Begun in 2015, the Meetings category has met with popular success. On its 2017 roster, there were no fewer than 13 conferences, 11 Works in Progress (both TV and Feature), 3 Keynotes, 2 Making Of, 4 Masterclasses and 8 Studio Focus.
During these different sessions, the floor is given to industry specialists, here to exchange on animation with audiences, with a focus on films, writers and techniques. This year the conferences were all held within the Mifa’s epicenter, obviously a resounding success given the crush.
Many well-known speakers were present, attracting the crowds: Glen Keane, Robert Valley, Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski, Joe Murray and Robert Skull, Eric Coleman, Kristine Belson, Go Nagaï…
The Works in Progress or WIP were yet another crowd-pleaser, with introductions to Little Vampire, Godzilla, The Breadwinner, Zero Impunity and many others.
And finally, with the Studio Focus sessions, many studios shared the footlights, such as Google Spotlight Stories, Cartoon Network, Pixar, Warner Animation Group, Passion Pictures…
The 2018 Meetings will welcome you with open arms, from Monday June 11 to Friday June 15, 2018!
Press
2017 was a record year for the press as well, since nearly 400 international journalists were present for the event.
Thanks to their diligent efforts, the Annecy Festival gained in worldwide coverage, with more than 400 printed articles, over 550 on-line subjects, over 30 French press news items, over 55 introductory pieces or coverage on national and regional TV stations, 80 radio broadcasts, of which 2 France Inter programs recorded in the throes of the Annecy Festival, for a total of nearly 400 international pieces.
Extra! Extra! Read all about it! via the 2017 Press Reviews as well as via the articles published by the press publications.
In Pictures
Would you like to discover or perhaps relive the entire Annecy Festival in pictures?
Tailor-made with you in mind: the Festival’s YouTube channel and its countless playlists, including recordings of the Shorts & Breakfast, Interviews, Mifa Expert Insights, short opening sequences by the Gobelins, Ice Cream Talks, video capture of the Masterclasses or Conferences, Folimage’s official partners trailer, and so much more! And for a fantastic summary of the full week, take a peek at the 2017 Ambiance Video!
Don’t forget, either, that on Flickr you’ve got a gallery replete with the happening’s official pictures!
The Team
To manage an event of such size and importance, CITIA, organizer of the Annecy Festival and its market, continually calls on new team members as the event approaches.
For this year’s edition 37 members composed the permanent staff, assisted by 75 fixed-term contract workers, one apprentice and 7 long-term interns.
And finally, the preparating and ultra-smooth running of things would be impossible without the 400 volunteers and almost 250 service-providers and temp workers on hand.
Roll out the complete list of permanent team members behind the 2017 Annecy International Animation Film Festival and Mifa.