Cartoon Movie Reveals Nominees For 2020 Cartoon Tribute Honors

One week ahead of Cartoon Movie (March 3–5), Europe’s premier pitching forum for animated features, the association behind the event has announced the finalists for its annual Cartoon Tribute awards.

The honors, which have been held annually since 2001, recognize achievements in three categories: director, distributor, and producer. The nominations present a cross-section of the European industry, representing films that have made a splash in the last year. Many of these films were presented at Cartoon Movie during development or production. (A parallel set of awards honoring tv animation are presented annually at Cartoon Forum, the equivalent event for tv productions.)

The winners will be picked by around 900 Cartoon Movie participants. They will be announced on March 5 at the Palais des Congrès in Bordeaux, France, during the forum. Read on for the full list of nominees:

European Director of the Year

• Zabou Breitman & Éléa Gobbé-Mévellec for The Swallows of Kabul (France)
  Produced by Les Armateurs, this film is an adaptation of Yasmina Khadra’s literary fiction set in a Taliban-occupied Kabul. Actor and director Breitman’s first animated feature and Gobbé-Mévellec’s first feature film as director premiered at Cannes in 2019.
• Frank Mosvold & Atle Blakseth for Ella Bella Bingo (Norway)
  Produced by Kool Produktion, this story about friendship is based on the popular tv series of the same name. The film was released in January 24, 2020 in Norway, Denmark, and Finland, and has already been sold to nearly 30 territories.
• Sergio Pablos for Klaus (Spain)
  Written and directed by Sergio Pablos in his directorial debut, this Christmas comedy film is produced by SPA Studios and distributed by Netflix. The film won seven Annie Awards, and was nominated for an Oscar for Best Animated Feature in 2020.

European Distributor of the Year

• Filmin (Spain)
  One of the first European vod platforms, Filmin operates in Spain and Portugal, and it’s focused on independent and European cinema. In 2013, it launched FilminKIDS, an exclusive channel for children between 3 and 12 years old with an extensive catalogue of over 320 films and series, 88% of which are European productions.
• Les Films du Préau (France)
  Les Films du Préau is a distribution company aimed at younger viewers that has been working with animation from all over Europe for the last two decades. Shooom’s Odyssey, Zébulon le Dragon, Gruffalo, Solan & Ludvig, and Jacob, Mimmi and the Talking Dogs are some of the titles the company has recently released.
• Lumière (Belgium)
  Lumière Group started its activities in 1996 in Bruges as an exhibitor. In 2003 they got into the distribution business in Benelux [Belgium, Netherlands, and Luxembourg] with a wide catalogue of European films such as I Lost My Body, Funan, and Phantom Boy.
• Outsider Films (Portugal)
  Outsider Films is a Portuguese distributor specialized in independent films. Created in 2012, the company releases 16 films per year with a special focus on animation, with movies such as Oggy and the Cockroaches, My Life as a Courgette, Loving Vincent, and The Breadwinner distributed in Portugal in the last three years.

European Producer of the Year

• Atom Art (Latvia)/Letko (Poland) for Jacob, Mimmi and the Talking Dogs, Edmunds Jansons’s first feature film.
• Prima Linea Productions (France)/France 3 Cinéma (France)/Indigo Film (Italy) for The Bears’ Famous Invasion of Sicily, a film directed by Lorenzo Mattotti.
• Trickstudio Lutterbeck (Germany)/Balance Film (Germany)/Doghouse Films (Luxembourg)/Artémis Productions (Belgium)/Maur Film (Czech Republic) for Fritzi — A Revolutionary Tale, a four-country co-production directed by Ralf Kukula & Matthias Bruhn.
• Xilam Animation (France)/Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes Cinéma (France) for I Lost My Body, a film directed by Jérémy Clapin, which was nominated for an Oscar for Best Animated Feature in 2020.

(Image at top, left to right: “Klaus,” “The Swallows of Kabul,” “Ella Bella Bingo.”)