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2015 Archives

Affiche Annecy 2015
  1. Festival
  2. Mifa
  3. Meetings
  4. Press
  5. In Pictures
  6. The Team

Summary

The 8,300 accredited pass-holders helped turn this 2015 Festival into a record year, replete with movie premieres and top names from the industry.

International Animation Film Festival (15th to 20th June, 2015)

This year's Festival and Market attracted almost 8,300 accredited visitors from 83 different countries to watch some 500 films (with 230 in the official competition), drawing in more than 125,000 admissions over the week!

This year, the 8 competing feature films were all impatiently awaited as they’d never before been screened in France. Vast crowds turned up for the screening events with sneak previews including Minions, Inside-Out, The Prophet, The Thief and the Cobbler, Phantom Boy. On view, as well, was some first footage from DOFUS – Book 1: Julith, Zootopia (Zootropolis) and The Good Dinosaur.

Annecy also welcomed a host of animation celebrities, who came to meet with their fans. Genndy Tartakovsky, Chris Meledandri, Florence Miailhe, Jacques Tardi, Regina Pessoa, Richard Williams, Roger Allers, Joan Gratz, Chris Buck, Pierre Coffin, Rich Moore and Byron Howard were part of the list, among others. But by far the biggest hits with the festival-goers and Annecy locals were a few characters going by the names of SpongeBob, Charlie Brown and Snoopy, Shaun the Sheep, Bob, Stuart and Kevin, the 3 heroes from Minions, who dropped anchor at the Pâquier and then took off on a lakeside carriage ride!

The Festival concentrated on two main themes this year. Firstly, Annecy welcomed Spain as its guest country, with a number of special programmes chosen by Carolina Lopez for the From Doodles to Pixels project which recounted 100 years of Spanish animation. Audiences also had the privilege of discovering other Spanish studios, during the Conferences and Territory Focus sessions.
The second theme gave centre stage to Women and Animation, with a selection of special programmes, trailers created by students from GOBELINS (l'école de l'image) paying tribute to female animation pioneers, and the 'ladies only' juries made up of film directors, journalists and producers. Also in line with the topic, Florence Miailhe was awarded an Honorary Cristal and the creator of the Annecy 2015 poster, Regina Pessoa was here for the week along with members of the Women in Animation association including Bonie Arnold, Margie Cohn, Julia Pistor, Adina Pitt and Jinko Gotoh.

Finally, Annecy 2015 launched some new formats to put directors even more in the spotlight and give them the opportunity to exchange with attendees. Thes Students' Snack Time sessions and the Feature Films Out of Competition Discussions turned out to be a great success with their public.

To take a look back over Annecy 2015, check out:

See you next year from 13th to 18th June for Annecy 2016, where French animation will be taking pride of place for the first time ever!

International Animation Film Market or Mifa (17th to 19th June, 2015)

This year, Mifa celebrated its 30th birthday. The event was a huge success as the figures indicate: 2,680 accredited pass-holders (10% increase); 555 exhibitors (9% increase); 364 buyers, distributors and investors (10% increase over 2014). This data just goes to show that Mifa is a world leader in the animation market, serving a unique role as an exchange hub for the industry.

This very special 30th birthday was celebrated in high spirits by the world’s largest animation studios. There’s an entire page specifically dedicated to Mifa’s thirtieth, with gifts of praise, illustrations and animations provided for the occasion.

2015 was also an innovative year with the inauguration of the Mifa & Variety’s Animation Personality of the Year Prize, awarded to Chris Meledandri, an emblematic figure in animation circles.
To give animation studios the opportunity to reveal their latest projects, the Focus Studio sessions were also created this year. Furthermore, the Market attracted first-time visits from Amazon and Netfix during the Share With sessions.

Mifa 2015 likewise gave both the European Commission and the European Audiovisual Observatory the opportunity to present their report on animation, Focus on Animation, stemming from the Mapping the Animation Industry in Europe study, and the CNC the floor to announce its Animation Cosip reform.

The Mifa Pitch sessions set their own records this year with some 300 projects sent in, 32 presented, 15 countries represented and an increase in attendance with over 1,000 vistors at the various sessions.

A new category was also added to the Pitch programme, entitled Animation du Monde, highlighting projects from countries with a low animation production capacity. Some highly talented project leaders from South Africa, Georgia, Indonesia and Madagascar were able to present their projects and proof of the success of this new session is the fact that it will continue in 2016, furthered by the unveiling of a full-fledged creative project.

Book your dates now for the 2016 International Animation Film Market: 15th to 17th June!

Meetings (15th to 19th June, 2015)

For 2015 a new type of accreditation was opened, specifically for the Meetings. This covered the 13 Conferences taking place during the Festival (check out the summaries), along with all the other sessions concerning films and filmmakers: the Masterclasses and the 8 Work in Progress and 3 Making Of sessions.

A new format, the Keynotes speeches, was also linked to this accreditation. Chaired by star names from the animation industry like Genndy Tartakovsky and Chris Meledandri, these Keynotes were an excellent platform for them to share their ideas concerning the sector.

For an inaugural run, it’s clear that this accreditation met with an enthusiastic audience, since nearly all sessions were rapidly filled. Many turned into seminal moments. Among others, this was true for the Making of Adventure Time; the Work(s) in Progress on The Red Turtle, My Life as a Zucchini, and The Peanuts Movie; as well as several conferences: WETA Digital, Pierre Coffin on Minions, and Will Becher on Shaun the Sheep.

Press

The 2015 Festival welcomed over 305 international reporters and press attachés. For the French written press and web sites alone, over 2,300 press items have already come out on the Festival, its Market and its Meetings. Through this, and other foreign publications, press releases and special reports on French national TV channels, the media coverage is all-encompassing, helping promote the animation industry and its key players to huge numbers of readers and viewers.
To explore these articles, click on the 2015 Press Review heading. Likewise, check out the press department’s publications and the Festival’s photo library.

In Pictures

To relive the latest Annecy Festival experience, take a trip on YouTube. It’s all online for your week’s renewed animated pleasure: videos of Shorts & Breakfast, Students’ Snack Time, Keynotes, the Festival Daily Online, the animated contributions by major studios for Mifa’s 30th, the Annecy 2015 general atmosphere video, the Partners’ trailers, the short opening sequences by the students of GOBELINS (l’école de l’image)… And don’t forget the Flickr gallery either, to view all the official photos of the event.

The Team

This 2015 edition of the Festival and Market owes its phenomenal success to the tireless efforts of the 37 permanent team members, seconded by 78 temporary-contract workers and interns, as well as 541 volunteers, service-providers and independent-contractors, all of whom enable such an outstanding event to exist.
Discover the list of the 2015 Festival team members.