Cannes Critics’ Week Selects Animated Films As Part Of Its Line-Up

The Cannes Film Festival may be light on animation this year (just one film was selected for out of competition), but its Critics’ Week sidebar will host three animated films amongst its shorts as well as a live-action feature with animated sequences.

A César-winning animation filmmaker, Céline Devaux’s live-action debut feature Everybody Loves Jeanne has been selected for a special screening at the event. The film incorporates pieces of animation into its narrative. Meanwhile João Gonzalez’s Ice Merchants and Robert-Jonathan Koeyers’ It’s Nice in Here will screen in the short competition, with Joseph Pierce’s Scale receiving a special screening.

Here are details about each of the selections:

Ice Merchants, João Gonzalez

• A father teaches his son the ways of collecting and transporting ice from their cabin on the edge of a cliff to a village far below them.
• 2d animated with a limited color palette of blues and oranges that emphasize the temperatures in and outside the comfy cabin.
• Director João Gonzalez’s previous work includes short films Nestor and The Voyager.
• A classically trained musician, Gonzalez also wrote the film’s score.

It’s Nice in Here, Robert-Jonathan Koeyers

• Rookie cop David and young Black girl Imani have drastically different memories of how things happened when the officer shot and killed her best friend Crimson in a corner shop.
• 2d-animated debut short from Robert-Jonathan Koeyers, a Willem de Kooning Academy alumni
• “It’s an attempt to paint a fragmented portrait of a boy where important pieces are missing and we’re deliberately not seeing the full picture,” explains Koeyers.

Scale, Joseph Pierce

• While driving down the highway, Will loses his sense of scale. A drug addict, the man must battle his inner demons to put reality back in order or risk becoming lost forever.
• Adapted from Will Self’s eponymous novella from the Grey Area short stories collection, director Joseph Pierce produced the film using rotoscoped, 2d animation.
• Pierce is currently developing his first feature. His previous shorts films include The Pub, Stand Up, and Clermont-Ferrand-winner A Family Portrait.

Everybody Loves Jeanne, Céline Devaux

• The live-action feature with animated sequences follows Jeanne and her inner monologue “Little Ghost,” a dancing, singing, hairy monster that lives in her head.
• Everybody Loves Jeanne (French title: Tout le monde aime Jeanne) is the highly-anticipated feature debut of director Céline Devaux, who returns to Cannes having impressed with 2015’s Sunday Lunch, that year’s César winner for best animated short.