The Annecy Animation Festival organized its closing ceremony on Saturday, during which two big winners of the main feature film competition were distinguished. Adam Elliot’s “Memoir of a Snail” won Annecy’s top prize, the Cristal for best feature film, and Gints Zilbalodis’ “Flow” won just about everything else.
Australian stop-motion feature “Memoir of a Snail” is the latest from Academy Award winner Elliot, who directed the animated short in 2004 with his stop-motion film “Harvie Krumpet” . This time, the director offers the moving story of Grace Pudel, a lonely misfit who loves collecting snails.
“There is a magic in 100% CG-free stop-motion, with its cellophane flames and tears made of sexual lube,” wrote Variety Chief film critic Peter Debruge in his review of the film. “Don’t be surprised if ‘Memory’ makes you lose your seats.”
Zilbalodis’ “Flow” won four honors at this year’s festival: the Gan Foundation Prize for Distribution, the Audience Prize and the Jury Prize, as well as the special prize for best original music, awarded Friday evening.
“Flow,” a Latvia-Belgium-France co-production, was a favorite heading into Annecy this year after a huge screening at Cannes, where it was one of its hottest titles, in animation or in live-action. The film now hopes to follow a path recently blazed for animated features, such as “Robot Dreams” and “I Lost My Body,” which begins in Cannes, passes through Annecy and ends at the Academy Awards with an Oscar nomination.
This year’s Grand Prize in the Contrechamp section was awarded to the Spanish feature film “The Dream of the Sultana” by Isabel Herguera, a three-part pictorial feature film directed by a Spanish artist living in India who discovers a (real) book in a land where women reign and men live isolated. Towards the end of its festival run, the film has already won two awards in San Sebastian and that of best international feature film at Anima-Brussels.
Portugal was elected Annecy’s country of honor this year and, rightly so, the Cristal for best short film was awarded to “Percebes” by Portuguese filmmakers Alexandra Ramires and Laura Gonçalves, both selected as Portuguese talents to watch by Variety at the start of this year’s festival. Gonçalves’ previous film, “The Garbage Man”, on which Ramires worked as an animator, was in competition in Annecy and won the best short film prize in Zagreb in 2022. Ramires’ 2020 short film “Tie”, on which Gonçalves worked as an animator, was screened in competition in Zagreb and Toronto.
Animated in painterly 2D and produced by BAP – Animation Studio, “Percebes” exemplifies Portugal’s greatest animation achievement to date: shorts and occasional features of great artistic ambition and social point. It also stands out for its extraordinary real-life soundtrack, a technique that Gonçalves perfected in “The Garbage Man.”
This year’s flagship TV film was Sophie Roze’s “The Guitar Away,” a charming 30-minute spot made using cutouts and puppet animation. In 2010, Roze’s stop-motion short film “Joseph’s Snails” was nominated for a European Film Award, and in 2012 she won the Best Animated Film award at the Dresden Film Festival with “Whale Bird.”
The 2024 Crystal for a commissioned film went to Pictoplasma “Opener 2023” by Will Anderson. Anderson is a BATFA-winning Scottish filmmaker whose short film “The Making of Longbird” won Best Graduation Film at Annecy in 2012.
Babelsberg Konrad Wolf Film University alumnus Daniel Sterlin-Altman won the Cristal for graduation short film with “Carroptica,” a stop-motion offering about anthropomorphized carrots navigating lust and loneliness in the strangest way. This one is for adults only.
The short film “Glass House” by Boris Labbé won the Off Limits prize. This honor is notable because the film was made using generative AI and Labbé participated in a roundtable in Annecy on the use of artificial intelligence in animation. Several films featuring AI-generated artwork were booed at this year’s festival and Annecy handing out an award to one of the films featured will certainly raise eyebrows.
Thursday evening, Annecy awarded the festival’s Golden Ticket to animation super-producer Bonnie Arnold (“How to Train Your Dragon,” “Toy Story”) during a reception for members of the Academy of Arts and Sciences. cinema sciences.
In addition to revealing this year’s winners, Annecy announced that Hungary would be the country of honor next year.
Below, the complete list of winners of this year’s Annecy prizes, including the Special Prizes revealed Friday evening.
FEATURE FILMS
Crystal for a feature film
“Memory of a Snail” (Adam Elliot, Australia)
Jury Prize
“Flow” (Gints Zilbalodis, Latvia, Belgium, France)
Audience Award
“Flow” (Gints Zilbalodis, Latvia, Belgium, France)
Gan Foundation Award for Distribution
“Flow” (Gints Zilbalodis, Latvia, Belgium, France)
Paul Grimault Prize
“Totto-Chan: The Little Girl at the Window” (Shinnosuke Yakuwa, Japan)
CHARACTERISTICS OF THE COUNTERCHAMP
Grand Prix
“The Dream of the Sultana” (Isabel Herguera, Spain, Germany)
Jury Prize
“Living large” (Kristina Dufková, Czech Republic, Slovakia, France)
SHORT FILMS
Cristal for a short film
“Percebes” (Alexandra Ramires, Laura Gonçalves, Portugal, France)
Jury Prize
“The car that came back from the sea” (Jadwiga Kowalska, Switzerland)
Audience Award
“Hurricane” (Jan Saska, Czech Republic, France, Slovakia, Bosnia and Herzegovina)
Reward out of bounds
“Glass house” (Boris Labbé, France)
Alexeieff – Parker Prize
“Beautiful men” (Nicolas Keppens, Belgium, France, Netherlands)
Jean-Luc Xiberras Prize for First Film
“(S)”, (Mario Radev, United Kingdom)
TELEVISION AWARDS
Crystal for a TV production
“The drifting guitar” (Sophie Roze, France, Switzerland)
Jury Prize for a TV Series
“My Life in Versailles “Versailles Ghost”,” (Clémence Madeleine-Perdrillat, Nathaniel H’limi, France, Luxembourg)
Jury prize for a special program
“Lola and the Noise Piano,” (Augusto Zanovello, France, Poland, Switzerland)
Audience Award
“The drifting guitar” (Sophie Roze, France, Switzerland)
ORDERED FILMS
Cristal for a commissioned film
“Pictoplasma” (Will Anderson, United Kingdom)
Jury Prize for a commissioned film
“TED-Ed “How Did South African Apartheid Happen and How Did It Ultimately End?” » (Aya Marzouk, United States, South Africa, Egypt)
GRADUATION FILMS
Crystal for a graduation film
“Carrotica” (Daniel Sterlin-Altman, Germany)
Jury Prize
“Pubert Jimbob” (Quirijn Dees, Belgium)
Lotte Reiniger Prize
“Maatitel” (Govinda Sao, India)
VR WORKS
Crystal for Best VR Artwork
“Gargoyle Doyle” (Ethan Shaftel, USA, Austria, Argentina)
SPECIAL PRICES
Price City of Annecy
“The meat seller” (Margherita Giusti, Italy)
France TV Short Film Prize
“The car that came back from the sea” (Jadwiga Kowalska, Switzerland)
André Martin French Short Film Prize
“Butterfly” (Florence Miailhe, France)
Award for Best Original Music for a Short Film
“Joko” (Aliaksandr Yasinski, Poland, Germany, Czech Republic)
Award for Best Original Score for a Feature Film
“Flow” (Rihards Zalupe, Gints Zilbalodis, Latvia, Belgium, France)
Young Audience Award
“Hello summer” (Martin Smatana, Veronika Zacharová, Slovakia, Czech Republic, France)
Canal+ Junior Jury Prize
“Noodles au Naturel” (Place Matteo Salanave, France)
Prices Festivals Connection
“Beautiful men” (Nicolas Keppens, Belgium, France, Netherlands)
VR Connection Festivals Awards
“Emperor” (Marion Burger, Ilan Cohen, France, Germany)