The Annecy Festival, the world’s leading animated film festival, will return to the Imperial Palace of Annecy this 8 to 14 June. Celebrating the 40th instalment of the event, the festival will showcase a diverse range of animated movies and short films, from upcoming blockbusters to indie and student projects.
The festival will also honour selected films with awards (or “Cristals”, in the festival’s parlance), split across eight different categories for short films, and two for feature films. The Annecys have become a must-watch event for awards buffs in recent years, as many Annecy winners, such as 2024’s Flow, have gone on to win Oscars down the line.
Of the more than fifty films competing, three originate from Singapore, which also happen to be the only Southeast Asian films in competition this year. These are:
- Zombie Safari: A six-episode adult animated series that tells the story of a ragtag group of zoo animals, who must put aside their differences to survive a zombie apocalypse. The episode “We Will Be Animals” is being nominated in the TV Films category.
- Neh Neh Pok: Nominated in the Graduation Films category, the short features a young girl going through puberty, who becomes insecure about her chest size due to judgement from herself and others.
- My Wonderful Life: We follow Grace Lee, an overworked mom in Singapore who collapses at work and is admitted into the hospital, where she finds newfound freedom as a patient. The short is being nominated in the Official Films category.
The Annecys will also screen a variety of films in its out-of-competition segments, which include Annecy Presents, a selection of feature films from around the world. One such film being screened is Fleak, a co-production between Finland, France, Malaysia, and Poland, where a young boy goes on a fantasy adventure with a strange interdimensional creature named Fleak.
Another category, Work In Progress, will showcase films that are currently in production, including The Violinist, a Singapore-Spain-produced historical drama that spans across 80 years of Singapore’s history; as well as Zsazsa Zaturnnah, a Filipino-France co-production about a shy gay man who can turn into a flamboyant female superhero.
A full list of nominees and more information on the festival can be found on the official Annecys website.
