Criterion Channel Is Putting A Huge Focus On Animation, Releasing 31 Features In July

Criterion, that great emblem of arthouse gatekeeping, is getting seriously into animation. Next month, it will release 31 indie animated titles on The Criterion Channel, its streaming service.

The films are a sample of prestige, adult-leaning indie animation from around the world. Titles range from the relatively famous (Oscar-nominated war documentary Waltz with Bashir, psychedelic French sci-fi classic Fantastic Planet) to the lesser known (Singaporean drama Tatsumi, Czech historical drama Alois Nebel). Some of our favorite features of recent years, like The Girl Without Hands and The Wolf House, are also on there, as well as established classics like Masaaki Yuasa’s Mind Game and Marcell Jankovics’ Son of the White Mare.

Animation has long been under-represented among Criterion’s dvd/Blu-ray releases: of the 1,476 titles in the company’s online catalogue, only six are categorized under the animation “genre.” The Criterion Channel has started to redress the imbalance somewhat by streaming a growing number of animated films. This bumper slate is a welcome leap forward.

Below is the full list of animated titles that will be available on the platform on July 1:

• Journey to the Beginning of Time (Karel Zeman, 1955)
• Invention for Destruction (Karel Zeman, 1958)
• The Fabulous Baron Munchausen (Karel Zeman, 1962)
• Belladonna of Sadness (Eiichi Yamamoto, 1973)
• János vitéz (Marcell Jankovics, 1973)
• Fantastic Planet (René Laloux, 1973)
• Watership Down (Martin Rosen, 1978)
• Son of the White Mare (Marcell Jankovics, 1981)
• Plague Dogs (Martin Rosen, 1982)
• Alice (Jan Švankmajer, 1988)
• Faust (Jan Švankmajer, 1994)
• Mind Game (Masaaki Yuasa, 2004)
• Paprika (Satoshi Kon, 2006)
• Persepolis (Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud, 2007)
• Waltz with Bashir (Ari Folman, 2008)
• A Town Called Panic (Stéphane Aubier and Vincent Patar, 2009)
• Mary and Max (Adam Elliot, 2009)
• Chico & Rita (Tono Errando, Fernando Trueba, and Javier Mariscal, 2010)
• The Rabbi’s Cat (Joann Sfar and Antoine Delesvaux, 2011)
• Alois Nebel (Tomáš Luňák, 2011)
• Tatsumi (Eric Khoo, 2011)
• The King of Pigs (Yeon Sang-ho, 2011)
• It’s Such a Beautiful Day (Don Hertzfeldt, 2012)
• Consuming Spirits (Chris Sullivan, 2012)
• Aya of Yop City (Marguerite Abouet and Clément Oubrerie, 2013)
• Rocks in My Pockets (Signe Baumane, 2014)
• The Wanted 18 (Amer Shomali and Paul Cowan, 2014)
• The Girl Without Hands (Sébastien Laudenbach, 2016)
• Tower (Keith Maitland, 2016)
• The Wolf House (Cristóbal León and Joaquín Cociña, 2018)
• No. 7 Cherry Lane (Yonfan, 2019)

The Criterion Channel streaming service is available in the U.S. and Canada.

Images at top, left to right: “Persepolis,” “It’s Such a Beautiful Day,” “Fantastic Planet”