Annecy at 40 Sets the Animation Agenda

For the next seven days, the sleepy Alpine town of Annecy will be transformed into the global hub of the worldwide animation industry.

The Annecy International Animation Film Festival (June 8-14), started as a bi-annual event for animation superfans, has become a must-attend for the biggest names in the industry — the animation divisions of Netflix, Disney/Pixar, Warner Bros., DreamWorks, Sony and Paramount will all be represented — alongside the cutting edge of the international indie industry. Two of last year’s Annecy winners — Gints Zilbalodis’ Latvian feature Flow, and Adam Elliot’s Australian claymation drama Memoir of a Snail — were 2025 Oscar nominees, with Flow becoming the first independent film to win the Academy Award for best animated feature.

“Everything is getting bigger and bigger, more and more, every year,” Marcel Jean, Annecy artistic director tells The Hollywood Reporter. “Every year, the festival is more important, the Annecy animation market, Mifa is more important. We’ve become the core of the calendar of animation activity worldwide.”

Annecy attendees will get a first look at this year’s biggest upcoming animated features and series, including Disney Animation’s Zootopia 2 and Pixar‘s Elio; Netflix’s Fixed and its Stranger Things animation series; Dreamworks’ Bad Guys 2 and Sony Pictures Animation’s basketball-themed Goat. Warner Bros. Animation will show off the best of its TV slate in a 25th anniversary celebration of Cartoon Network Studios and a special presentation for WB’s Adult Swim. The former will include a panel of Cartoon Network luminaries: Genndy Tartakovsky (Samurai Jack), Craig McCracken (The Powerpuff Girls), Pendleton Ward (Adventure Time), Rebecca Sugar (Steven Universe), J.G. Quintel (Regular Show), Adam Muto (Adventure Time: Fionna and Cake); the latter highlights of Adult Swim’s upcoming slate, including the new season of hit series Smiling Friends, announced at Annecy last year.

Simpsons creator Matt Groening will take the stage at Annecy, alongside executive producer and showrunner Matt Selman and producer David Silverman for a session on the show’s groundbreaking legacy, with Groening also receiving an Honorary Cristal lifetime achievement award from the festival for his “exceptional contribution to animation.”

On the indie side, Andy Serkis will present his new animated adaptation of George Orwell’s Animal Farm, featuring the voice talents of Seth Rogen, Woody Harrelson and Kieran Culkin, which Goodfellas is selling internationally. French auteur Michel Gondry (The Science of Sleep, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind), a first-time Annecy attendee, will receive a Honorary Cristal, as will British animator Joanna Quinn (Girls’ Night Out, Famous Fred).

“We love big studio productions, and we love small experimental films. If it’s great animation and we love it, we’ll showcase it at the festival or the market,” says Annecy Festival CEO Mickaël Marin. “Year after year, we can see, at Annecy, the evolution of the animation industry worldwide, with new countries, new talents emerging.”

The festival’s competition lineup, typical for Annecy, is truly global, from Zhong Ding’s big-budget Chinese feature Into the Mortal World to Sylvain Chomet’s A Magnificent Life — an animated biopic of pioneering French filmmaker Marcel Pagnol — to Yasuhiro Aoki’s Japanese anime ChaO and Maïlys Vallade and Liane-Cho Han’s Little Amélie or the Character of Rain, both of which were snatched up by Gkids for North America just ahead of the festival.

“We see it as our responsibility to expose the whole state of the world of animation,” says Jean, “to look at what’s happening in the animation world, and to try a take a Polaroid of that, both the biggest, most spectacular works but also the most unique, and the films that reflect the trends, the preoccupations and the topics that are most important for animation creators.”

“If we only selected the very biggest films, we’d always have the same countries represented,” notes Mifa head Véronique Encrenaz. “But at the festival and the market, we act as a laboratory, working with talents from countries all around the world to develop their talents and their industries. And, year by year, they grow. So this year, we have emerging African countries at Mifa. For the first time, we have a Nigerian feature [Shofela Coker’s Crocodile Dance] in the industry section Mifa Pitches, we have emerging countries like Vietnam and ones from South America, from Asia, that are investing more and more in animation.”

The festival’s 40th edition will also pay tribute to Hungarian animation, highlighting the country’s rich animated history, with screenings of classics including Cristal winners Heroic Times (1982) by József Gémes, and The District! (2005) from Áron Gauder.

This year’s Work in Progress showcase – always one of the most popular sidebars at any edition of the fest – will feature early looks at such features as Carmen from Chicken for Linda! director Sébastien Laudenbach; Alessandro Carloni and Erica Rivinoja’s The Cat in the Hat adaptation for Warner Bros. Pictures Animation (featuring Bill Hader) and Olivier Clert and Jean-Christophe Dessaint’s Lucy Lost from French studio Xilam. On the series side, Annecy’s works in progress will feature Netflix’s upcoming Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Deathwatch; Adult Swim’s Women Wearing Shoulder Pads and Get Jiro!, and the French series Bitches from director Manon Tacconi.