Top Story: ‘The Wild Robot’ And ‘Arcane’ Lead 52nd Annie Award Nominations

The Annecy International Animated Film Festival announced today that its opening night film will be Zombillenium by Arthur de Pins.

De Pins’ film will kick off screenings of 23 animated features, 10 of which will be screened in competition and 13 of which will screen out-of-competition.

The festival is placing a significant emphasis on Asian films this year: 10 of the 23 films are from China, Japan, and South Korea, including some buzzed-about projects like Jian Liu’s Have A Nice Day and Masaaki Yuasa’s Lu Over the Wall. (pictured above)

The only American film that made the cut is Tony Bancroft and Scott Christian Sava’s Animal Crackers.

A diversity of techniques will be on display. At least nine of the films incorporate 2D hand-drawn animation, while the rest us a diversity of techniques, among them cgi, rotoscoping, and puppets.

Here is the festival line-up:

Feature films in competition at Annecy 2017
  • Animal Crackers by Tony Bancroft and C Scott Sava (USA)
  • A Silent Voice by Noako Yamada (Japan)
  • Big Fish & Begonia by Xuan Liang and Chun Zhang (China)
  • In This Corner of the World by Sunao Katabuchi (Japan)
  • Ethel and Ernest by Roger Mainwood (United Kingdom)
  • Have a Nice Day by Jian Liu (China)
  • Lu Over the Wall by Massaki Yuasa (Japan)
  • Loving Vincent by Dorota Kobiela and Hugh Welchman (Poland, United Kingdom)
  • Tehran Taboo by Ali Soozandeh (Austria, Germany)
  • Zombillenium by Arthur de Pins (France)
Feature films out of competition at Annecy 2017
  • 1917 – The Real October by Katrin Rothe (Germany)
  • Ancien and the Magic Tablet by Kunihiko Yuyama and Kenji Kamiyana (Japan)
  • Ana y Bruno by Carlos Carrera (Mexico)
  • Deep by Julio Soto (Spain)
  • In the Forest of Huckybicky by Rasmus A. Sivertsen (Norway)
  • I’ll Just Live in Bando by Yong Sun Lee (South Korea)
  • Lost in the Moonlight by Hyun-Joo Kim (South Korea)
  • Little Heroes by Juan Pablo Buscarini (Venezuela)
  • Richard the Stork by Reza Memari and Toby Genkel (Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg, Norway)
  • Rudolph the Black Cat by Kunihiko Yuyama and Motonori Sakakibara (Japan)
  • Tad, the Lost Explorer, and the Secret of King Midas by Enrique Gato Borregan and David Alonso (Spain)
  • Tea Pets by Gary Wang (China)
  • The Man Who Knew 75 Languages by Anne Magnussen and Pawel Debski (Norway)

In addition to the films in the festival line-up, Annecy will also present screenings of numerous other new features, including Captain Underpants, Despicable Me 3, Blame!, Mazinger Z, Mutafukaz, The Big Bad Fox and Other Tales, and The Jungle Bunch.

The festival has previously announced shorts films, commissioned projects, and tv series that will be screening in competition. The entire festival line-up can be found on the festival website.