Watch Top Festival Shorts For Free On Autour de Minuit’s New Channel For Adult Animation

Having displaced much of our lives to the internet, the pandemic is spurring film distributors to improve their online offerings. Such is the case with Autour de Minuit, which has launched Animatic, a very appealing new Youtube channel dedicated to animated shorts for teens and adults. More precisely, this is a rebranding of their existing channel, now bolstered by a new schedule of biweekly releases.

The Paris-based Autour de Minuit consistently produces and distributes some of the best, funniest, and downright weirdest films on the animated shorts circuit. We’ve featured many over the years, including Alberto Vázquez’s Decorado, David Coquard-Dassault’s Peripheria, and Gabrielle Lissot’s Jukai.

All three are available on the channel, along with around 100 other shorts from Autour de Minuit’s vaults. There are rich pickings, including the Oscar-winning corporate satire Logorama and Oh Willy…, the beguiling psychological dramedy that won dozens of prizes and launched a trend for needle-felt puppet animation.

New films will be uploaded twice a week, on Wednesdays and Saturdays. The program will include both classic shorts and new works, many of which will be receiving their online — or even world — premiere on Animatic. The channel has already launched its first exclusive The Monster of Nix (image at top), a half-hour musical fantasy by Rosto, the multidisciplinary Dutch artist who died last year. We understand that the plan is eventually to host films from outside Autour de Minuit’s catalogue as well.

Autour de Minuit has produced almost 80 shorts since it was founded in 2001, and its catalogue spans almost 400 shorts. The company also produces series, mostly aimed at younger audiences, and is ramping up its feature slate with a number of films in production and development (including Vázquez’s Unicorn Wars). In April, we spoke to the company’s director Nicolas Schmerkin about his creative philosophy.