Montreal’s Sommets Starts Today With Reformatted Canadian Animation Competition

Montreal’s Les Sommets du cinéma d’animation kicks off today and runs through May 15.

For this year’s edition – its twentieth – the festival has curated 114 animated films from around the world, including an expansive group of Canadian films which will, for the first time, be screened across four competition sections.

“The new format of the Sommets was made possible by a much larger selection of Canadian works than what we used to offer,” explained Marco de Blois, artistic director and founder of the Sommets du cinéma d’animation. “Through the various approaches, from experimental to narrative films, including music videos, commissioned films and educational ones, an extraordinary know-how is displayed on the screens of the Cinémathèque Québécoise.”

Sommets is also hosting two Work in Progress sessions: Les Faufiles by Louis Roy, produced by Rosalie Chicoine Perreault at E.D. Films, and Adam Change Lentement by Joël Vaudreuil, produced by David Pierrat of Parce que Films.

Other highlights include the Grand Angle Program, a non-competitive section devoted to “discovery, exploration, and daring”; the self-explanatory Best of Annecy section; a roundtable on animation and dance; artists talks with Élise Simard and Jean-Charles Mbotti Malolo; a tribute to Canadian filmmaker Craig Welch (How Wins are Attached); and a retrospective of the work of Terril Calder (Métis).

The festival opens tonight with a screening of Anne-Laure Daffis and Léo Marchand’s Les voisins de mes voisins sont mes voisins (My Neighbor’s Neighbor) at the Cinémathèque québécoise. On Sunday, May 15, the festival will close with a screening of Ayumu Watanabe’s Fortune Favors Lady Nikuko.

The festival will take place at the Cinémathèque québécoise in Montreal (335 Boul. de Maisonneuve East). For ticket info and additional details on programming, visit SommetsAnimation.com.

Pictured at top: “Les voisins de mes voisins sont mes voisins.”