So you think animated films are just for kids and you won’t enjoy the largest festival in the world dedicated to the genre? I’m here to tell you that you’re wrong — and a major reason why for me was a film that’s not even finished yet but now burrows deep inside my heart. Read on to find out more.
Where and what is the Annecy Festival
Let me start at the beginning. Of my trip to the Annecy Festival that is, as I don’t think I can take you all the way back in history to the beginning of animation. Even after visiting the Musée du film d’animation, a museum entirely dedicated to the artwork in Annecy, I’m still a beginner when it comes to this art form. I’ll just say that those flip books that some of us got as children, showing an animal or person in motion as you flipped the tiny pages, is where it all began.
Annecy is a picturesque town on Lake Annecy, tucked away in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region of Southeastern France. To reach it from London I landed in Geneva, which is a short 40 minute drive away, traffic permitting. Because of its mountainous location, the town is a winter wonderland, a destination for those who wish to ski on the nearby mountains overlooking the city and enjoy some of the cheesy meals the town is famous for. Wandering through the old town, the heartwarming aroma of melted cheese often distracted me from reaching my destination and added a good twenty minutes to any Google map estimate when I needed to arrive at a press junket or a screening. I simply had to stop for a quick melted raclette sandwich or a pasta gratin, topped with, you guessed it, lots of cheese.
The Annecy Castle overlooking the city
During the month of June, Annecy becomes home to the largest animation festival in the world and for the rest of the summer enjoys a mild-weathered season of lakeside tourism. The Annecy Festival was founded in 1960 and at first, took place every two years, becoming a yearly event in 1998. Today, it is one of four international animated film festivals sponsored by ASIFA — the International Animated Film Association. At the end of the event, films in the official competitions are awarded the Annecy Crystal and a variety of other prizes. In 2023, the festival welcomed more than 15,000 attendees, which is impressive considering that Cannes, the biggest film festival in the world, boasted around 35,000 in the same year.
Little quaint hotels are everywhere in Annecy, dotted around the old town or nearby in the more modern city. I stayed at The Pelican which proved a wonderful home away from home and benefited from a central location, just a ten minutes walk from the Bonlieu theater where most screenings of the films in the Annecy Festival are held. It also boasts breathtaking views of the lake and the surrounding mountains and I managed to catch a light show celebrating DreamWorks Animation’s 30th year anniversary from my bedroom window. And what a light show that was!
Special festival traditions and little known facts
Every festival has its own special rituals, which the audience is privy to. These can happen either before or after each screening, depending on how many festival “veterans” — frequent attendees — are present. Cannes has its standing ovation fixation, where the media and viewers alike will post the timings of audiences clapping which can go anywhere from five minutes to twenty, and beyond, presumably measuring a film’s success. At TIFF — the Toronto International Film Festival — attendees make pirate sounds when an anti-piracy ad is played before each screening, and in Annecy people throw paper airplanes at the screen. This is done before the start of a film, and everyone claps when one of those handmade creations actually makes it to the stage. Most land in other people’s hair or on the floor, but the practice is so beloved that now many film studios provide sheets of paper on the theater seats to allow everyone to follow the tradition. Then, once the lights go down and the ad from one of the festival sponsors plays before the scheduled film, when an animated rabbit appears on screen everyone shouts “lapin!” — the French word for bunny. There are also fish sounds made by people smacking their lips, thanks to the same ad providing the inspiration.
‘The Wild Robot’ team on stage at the Bonlieu, surrounded by the paper airplanes which had made it to the stage and enjoying a standing ovation by the audience.
It is quite heartwarming to be in the audience at Annecy, surrounded by so many animated film lovers, filmmakers and aspiring animators.
Another thing immediately apparent to those attending Annecy for the first time is the lack of attitude by all those who are there to enjoy these beautiful animated gems. None of the pushing and shoving of Venice, Cannes and beyond is present in Annecy, and people wait patiently in line for their chance to enter the venue. No one acts self important which is probably the reason why some of my more sensitive colleagues love attending festivals that focus on animation.
One afternoon, as I waited by a side door to enter a venue for one of The Wild Robot’s insightful panel, a young man, no older than 20 came over and asked me politely “is this the way in?” with such kindness in his voice that I felt a sudden urge to hug him. I didn’t of course, as that would have been creepy but you get my point. Animation breeds kindness, and you’ll see how The Wild Robot and its story of survival fits into that later. Read on.
For all the prizes awarded to films in Competition at this year’s Annecy Festival, which included a well-deserved top win for Adam Elliot’s Memoir of a Snail, check out the festival’s website.
Country in the Spotlight: Portugal
This year’s country in the spotlight at Annecy was Portugal, which meant that the bags we received when we collected our accreditation — the badge which allows access to screenings, talks and events during the festival — featured red carnations in the design. A Portuguese colleague, the film critic Cláudio Alves, explained that the choice of flowers had to do with his country’s “Carnation Revolution” of 1974 which overthrew the Estado Novo National Dictatorship and brought about major social, political and economic while also encouraging the transition to democracy in Portugal. The revolution’s iconic name is because almost no shots were fired and demonstrators placed carnations in the muzzles of the soldiers’ guns and on their uniforms.
Why ‘The Wild Robot’ needs to be on everyone’s radar
The main reasons I attended this year’s festival was to listen in on a few activities that focused on the upcoming DreamWorks Animation title The Wild Robot, directed by Chris Sanders and produced by Jeff Hermann. The film will be distributed worldwide, starting in September, by Universal and is a new adaptation of a literary sensation, Peter Brown’s beloved, award-winning, #1 New York Times bestseller, The Wild Robot. The book by Brown, published in 2016, is an illustrated middle-grade novel and is part of a trilogy that now includes The Wild Robot Escapes and The Wild Robot Protects. Needless to say, I’ve ordered all three on Amazon.
The film based on the book is visually stunning but also filled with heartwarming emotions and important lessons — for the middle schoolers it is intended but also their parents and us “kids” of all ages. It is impossible to remain dry eyed while watching the film, and I started to cry during a short presentation to introduce the audience to some of the early scenes in the film. Turned out, that wasn’t even the ending I was sobbing through, just a really emotional turning point in the story! And when I was told that the creative team’s starting point for the feel of the film were Walt Disney’s Bambi and Steven Spielberg’s E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial I got it wholeheartedly. These folks definitely had me at hello!
The film’s short synopsis, courtesy of DreamWorks and Universal, reads: “The epic adventure follows the journey of a robot—ROZZUM unit 7134, “Roz” for short — that is shipwrecked on an uninhabited island and must learn to adapt to the harsh surroundings, gradually building relationships with the animals on the island and becoming the adoptive parent of an orphaned gosling.” Surrounded by all different species of animals, Roz is out of her element and constantly attacked. She looks around for tasks to be assigned, as that is her dharma, her purpose — to solve the problems her human owners provide her with. Yet throughout her adventure Roz retains her inner spirit, which is one of helpfulness and kindness. In fact, the unofficial tagline for the film, which director Chris Sanders disclosed during his insightful presentation inside the Grande Salle Bonlieu is that of employing “unrelenting kindness as a means of survival.” But also that the ultimate intelligence is adaptability — learning to live in others’ worlds, not just surviving in our own. Now there’s two principles that I could call my own.
Roz is perfectly voiced by Academy Award winning actress Lupita Nyong'o, while Kit Connor is Brightbill and Pedro Pascal is the fox Fink. Other cameos include Ving Rhames, Mark Hamill, Bill Nighy and Catherine O’Hara.
After our preview teaser screening of ‘The Wild Robot’ we went to have some free, delicious ice cream, courtesy of DreamWorks.
Final thoughts? Make kindness your superpower
So what were the lessons learned at Annecy Festival for me? That we are never too old to find magic in our lives and sometimes becoming a child again, at least in one’s heart while watching an animated film, is the best thing for one’s soul. But also that cinema shouldn’t always mean a trip to a movie theater because films that we love and which bring joy to us, can always be accessed on the streaming services that make our lives a bit more fantastical every day.
And of course, most important of all is that kindness can be a superpower, this one thanks to The Wild Robot and the film’s creative team. Yes, we even got some free ice cream courtesy of DreamWorks, with a special voucher inside the goodie bag everyone in the audience received at the special events organized around the film.
Would I come back to the Annecy Festival? In a heartbeat, of course!