Animation Is Film To Host N. American Premieres Of ‘The Colors Within’ And ‘The Day The Earth Blew Up’

Animation Is Film (AIF) festival, founded by distributor GKIDS in partnership with the Annecy Int’l Animation Film Festival and Variety, is returning for its seventh edition, set to take place October 18-20 at the TCL Chinese Theatre in Hollywood.

The festival will kick off on Friday, October 18, with the North American premiere of The Colors Within, the latest film from Japanese director Naoko Yamada (A Silent Voice). The film features animation from Japanese studio Science Saru and is being distributed in the U.S. by GKIDS. Yamada will be in attendance.

On Saturday, AIF is offering the North American premiere of Warner Bros. Animation’s The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie, which will be distributed domestically by Ketchup Entertainment. Director Pete Browngardt will present the film in person. The festival’s closing night film will be the Los Angeles premiere of Adam Elliot’s Memoir of a Snail, which won the top feature film prize at Annecy earlier this year. The film is being distributed by IFC Films in the States, and Elliot will also be there in person.

The Colors Within and Memoir of a Snail are both in the official competition, along with four other titles. Surprisingly, the festival is only offering six feature films in its competition program, less than any previous year in the festival’s history. With such a rich selection of independent and international features to choose from, it’s unclear why so few films were selected for competition this year.

Conversely, the festival is expanding its special screenings and studio events with numerous talks, panels, and screenings of mainstream commercial animation. There will be panels dedicated to Inside Out 2, Moana 2, Transformers One, and The Wild Robot, as well as a look at the new Disney short An Almost Christmas Story with director David Lowery and producer Alfonso Cuarón in person.

Among the major studios, Netflix is conspicuously absent from the event this year, after having had key titles presented at the last four editions. The company is still listed as a sponsor for this year’s edition.

The festival will also host multiple programs of award-winning short films, and is broadening its definition of film to include panels dedicated to series like Invincible Fight Girl and Yoppaman.

Tickets and other info will be available at AnimationIsFilm.com while a festival trailer and the full programming line-up can be found below:

Animation Is Film 2023 Program

Feature Competition Lineup

• Boys Go to Jupiter – Julian Glander (USA)
• The Colors Within – Naoko Yamada (Japan)
• Flow – Gints Zilbalodis (Latvia, Belgium, France)
• Ghost Cat Anzu – Yoko Kuno, Nobuhiro Yamashita (Japan)
• Memoir of a Snail – Adam Elliot (Australia)
• Sultana’s Dream – Isabel Herguera (Spain, Germany)

Special Screenings and Studio Events

• The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie – Pete Browngardt (U.S.)
• Miyazaki, Spirit of Nature – Leo Favier (France)
• Mononoke The Movie: Phantom In The Rain – Kenji Nakamura (Japan)
• Takeshi Koike’s Redline 15th Anniversary screening
• Inside Out 2 screenwriting masterclass w/ Meg LeFauve and Dave Holstein
• Moana 2 filmmaker panel with sneak peek footage
• Transformers One panel w/ Josh Cooley (director), Jason Scheier (production designer), Steven King (animation supervisor) and Amy Christensen (lead character designer)
• Chris Sander interview session about The Wild Robot and his career
• Yoppaman work-in-progress session with creators Zack Fox and Chibu Okere
• Invincible Fight Girl tv series preview with creator Juston Gordon-Montgomery

Short Films

• Award-winning shorts screen including Beautiful Men (Nicolas Keppens), A Crab in the Pool (Jean-Sebastien Hamel, Alexandra Myotte), Nube (Christian Arredondo, Diego Alonso Sanchez de la Barquera Estrada), Wander to Wonder (Nina Gantz), and Yuck! (Loic Espuche).
• Best of Annecy screening including I Died in Irpin (Anastasia Falileieva), In the Shadow of the Cypress (Hossein Molayemi, Shirin Sohani), Maybe Elephants (Torill Kove), and Percebes (Laura Gonçalves, Alexandra Ramires).
• Student showcase of Southern California schools including films from Calarts, University of Southern California, California State University Long Beach; and California State University Fullerton.