In June 2020 CITIA launched the arts residency "Graphic development for animation feature film" to assist creation.
Discover the new winning writers and their projects selected to join the Annecy Festival Residency 2024.
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With backing from the Région Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, Département de la Haute-Savoie, Drac, CNC and Netflix, CITIA, the organisers of the Annecy International Animation Film Festival and the Mifa, wanted to continue supporting animation feature film writers by giving them the time and a place to create, to network, to provide increased visibility, and continuous project support.
The Annecy Festival Residency provides a tailor-made offer to each of the selected projects, in an inspiring and stimulating ecosystem, as well as connecting with esteemed mentors in the animation sector.
Here’s a few key figures, the 2024 edition of the Annecy Festival Residency includes:
The selection committee had the delicate task of putting together an eclectic and equitable selection from these submissions. The goal was to identify projects that would reap the full benefits of the Residency, ensure an overall coherence, and demonstrate their appeal for the animation film industry.
The selection committee is a broad-based group of animation professionals whose purpose is to thoroughly analyse the projects. For this 2024 edition: Aurel (Cartoonist, Director), Damien Brunner (Producer, Folivari), Jean-Christophe Roger (Director), Sara Wikler (Script Doctor) and Valérie Yendt (Distributor, Gebeka Films).
Discover the three animation feature film projects selected to the 2024 Annecy Festival Residency:
Discover the writers of these future animated feature films who will be joining the Annecy Residency from April this year.
Marie Deboissy grew up in both sunny Guadeloupe and the Bordeaux region. She graduated in 2019 from the Atelier supérieur d’animation. Inspired by nature, where she spent her youth, she works predominantly with colour in realistic compositions steeped in mystery. She depicts characters, experiences and emotions by seeking out beauty in the tragic and ordinary. Alongside the directing, art directing and animation set designing, she develops her universe primarily through oil painting.
"I’m very excited about the Residency because it’s a golden opportunity to refine the Cabanon de l’oncle Jo project’s animation style and techniques. It’s brilliant to be able to use this time exclusively for the film’s graphic development in a region that I love and in the company of other inspiring artists; especially thanks to the mentorships provided by the Residency. This is a unique opportunity that will bring great depth and artistic maturity to the film, but also to myself."
Tigran Arakelyan is an artist with over a decade of expertise in animation and cinema.
Graduating from Hakob Kojoyan secondary art school in 2009 and later earning a degree in Art Direction for Cinema from the Yerevan State Institute of Theatre and Cinematography in 2013, Tigran embarked on his artistic journey early in life. His skills grew while he worked as a designer at the well-known ReAnimania International Animation and Comics Festival from 2010 to 2012.
With a profound passion for cinema, Tigran has worked as Art Director for over 10 movies, including the acclaimed Aurora’s Sunrise. His remarkable talent garnered prestigious awards, such as Best Art Director at the Anahit National Award Ceremony during the Academy Awards in 2019 and the award for Best Film at the One Minute One Shot competition organized by the Armenian Center for Contemporary Experimental Art (ACCEA).
Since co-founding OnOff Studio in 2018, Tigran has played a pivotal role in completing four short animated movies and is actively involved in the development of two TV series projects, three short animated movies, and the animated feature film Zako. The studio employs innovative immersive VR technologies as tools for animation development, showcasing Tigran's commitment to pushing creative boundaries in the industry.
"Selected for the Annecy Festival Residency, I'm excited and feel a strong sense of responsibility. It's not just about personal growth; it's a chance to boost our studio and help advance the Armenian animation industry. I look forward to immersing myself in this transformative experience and leveraging it to make a lasting impact on both a personal and industry-wide level."
Sofía Carrillo is a stop-motion animation film director.
Winner of two Silver Ariel for Best Short Animated Film at the Mexican Academy of Film Arts and Sciences: Black Doll (Prita Noire) in 2011, and Cerulia, 2017.
She is also the creator of the interstitials for the XX Anthology Horror Film, directed by Jovanka Vuckovic, Annie Clark, Roxanne Benjamin and Karyn Kusama (Magnolia Pictures and XYZ Films), which premiered at Sundance in 2017.
Her work has participated at Annecy, Sundance, Chicago, Tricky Women, Sitges, Habana and other film festivals.
Sofia is an AMPAS (Oscar) and AMACC (Ariel) Academy member. She also collaborated in the second unit of Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio.
"My Mexican heart is happy and proud to participate in this residency in Annecy, it is a huge honor, this will be a magnificent opportunity to enrich our project Insectarium."
The mentoring’s first phase allows the artists to take a step back from their film’s storyline and reflect on their objectives in terms of visual development. It is a kind of checkpoint providing the authors the opportunity to question themselves and subsequently confirm the elements which are ready enough to be explored from a graphic point of view.
The mentoring’s second phase is key. A real catalyst, it boosts creation and encourages the authors to think about their directing, explore new tangents, challenge their limits and allow themselves this experimental phase, which is so valuable in animation.
Discover the mentors who will be assisting the authors during this Residency.
The mentors for the script aspects:
"For the last 25 years, writer, scriptwriter and translator Valérie Zenatti has been exploring the fundamental questions posed by childhood, language and war, in a broad search for the form these questions can take. She is author of several children’s books, including A Bottle in the Gaza Sea, published by L'école des loisirs in 2005, which has been adapted for the screen by Thierry Binisti, for stage by several companies and translated into eighteen languages. Translator of the Israeli writer Aharon Appelfeld, she wrote Dans le faisceau des vivants, a book reflecting on the relationship between the two writers (L'Olivier Publishing House, Prix Essai France Télévisions 2019). She has published six books with L'Olivier, including Jacob, Jacob, winner of the 2015 Prix du Livre Inter, and most recently Qui-vive. She is also co-writer of the CANAL+ series Possessions and the animation film My Father’s Secrets directed by Véra Belmont (2023)." – Patrice Normand
With a degree in literature and oriental languages, Vanessa Chenaie launched her career in the film industry as a feature-film reader for a broadcaster, and co-producer of short films in a small organisation. Also a journalist, she pursued a career in the written press as Editor-in-Chief for a design and architecture magazine. Now, back in the film industry, she works with several independent producers as a consultant. She has set herself the joyful and exciting mission of assisting authors on their quest to write the story they wish to tell.
Céline Sciamma was born in 1978 in Cergy-Pontoise, France.
After receiving a master’s degree in French literature, she studied screenwriting at the national French film school, La Fémis, in Paris. There she wrote Naissance des pieuvres that would turn into her feature directorial debut, Water Lilies, in 2007, selected for the Cannes Film Festival (Un Certain Regard).
Sciamma’s 2011 film Tomboy won numerous accolades, including the Teddy Jury Award at the Berlinale. In 2014, her film Girlhood premiered at Cannes Directors’ Fortnight.
Two years later, she scripted My Life as a Courgette, an animated film by Claude Barras that attracted considerable audience and critical acclaim, won numerous awards and received an Oscar nomination.
Sciamma returned to directing in 2019 with Portrait of a Lady on Fire, earning her Best Screenplay at Cannes. In 2021, she directed Little Mom, which premiered at the Berlin Film Festival. In 2023, she produced and directed her first short film This Is How a Child Becomes a Poet about poet Patrizia Cavalli’s house.
The mentors for the graphic development aspects:
Patrice Suau was born in 1969 in a village between Argenteuil and Pontoise near Paris, at the heart of one of the impressionist painters’ most cherished regions. From a very young age, he used to skip school to escape to the banks of the river Seine, where he encountered many painters and would very quickly follow in their footsteps.
He spent a number of years in idyllic bohemia, exhibiting his works of Parisian street scenes, the banks of the Seine and bridges at night, etc., in the cafés and restaurants. He also painted instant portraits there. But his passion for nature and beautiful landscapes prompted him to explore further afield in the countryside, paths and forests.
After several years of wandering, his work was noticed by an animation film director, who was impressed by his ability to reproduce the landscapes’ atmospheres and capture the poetry between light and colour.
A new life opened up for him, and after working on film sets, he joined the artistic team for numerous animation films such as Calamity, A Childhood of Martha Jane Cannary (2020), Long Way North (2015), Houdini (2014), Asterix and Obelix: Mansion of the Gods (2014), The Day of the Crows (2012) and Lascars (2009).
Graham Annable is a Canadian cartoonist and animator. He was an Oscar®-nominated co-director with Anthony Stacchi for Laika Studios' The Boxtrolls.
His unique voice has been consistently recognized in the mediums of film, games and graphic novels over the last 30 years. He was a story artist on Coraline, ParaNorman, Kubo and the Two Strings, Missing Link and more recently on The Monkey King and Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio. His children's series of graphic novels, Peter & Ernesto, have garnered him an Eisner nomination, and the Canadian Silver Birch Award.
The Grickle Channel on YouTube showcases over 70 animated shorts he has created independently over the last decade that have popped up in various film festivals. During his professional career as a storyteller, he's had the privilege to work with such luminaries as Chuck Jones, Henry Selick, and Mark Gustafson, to name a few.
Kim Keukeleire is an animation director and an animator specialised in stop-motion animation.
After completing her Master’s in animation film at La Cambre in Bruxelles in 1992, she worked locally and abroad on numerous productions.
Among others, she animated on the first Chicken Run (Peter Lord and Nick Park), Fantastic Mr. Fox (Wes Anderson), Frankenweenie (Tim Burton), No Dogs or Italians Allowed (Alain Ughetto) and Sauvages ! (Claude Barras).
She was Lead Animator on Isle of Dogs (Wes Anderson) and Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio (Guillermo del Toro and Mark Gustafson). Recently, she animated the alien sequence in the feature film Asteroid City by Wes Anderson.
She was also Animation Director on the film My Life as a Courgette (Claude Barras) then The Inventor (Jim Capobianco and Pierre-Luc Granjon).
Lastly, Kim has sat on juries at numerous international festivals and given many conferences, masterclasses and workshops worldwide.
During the 3rd Annecy Festival Residency, held from 3rd April to 30th June 2023, three projects were chosen and hosted:
(Re)discover these projects, their directors and the mentors who assisted them during their residency.
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A zeitgeist selection. This is how the selection committee could describe its choices for this 4th edition of the Annecy Festival Residency.
In the image of what festivals and cinemas fervently advocate, the committee was deeply moved by the stories that bring us face to face with the reality of our world and its complexity. Narratives led by authors who employ all their poetic gifts to tackle the "woefully" familiar yet such topical themes as species becoming extinct, being uprooted or imprisonment in times of war.
These promising animation filmmakers cast a candid, well-informed look on our society, acting as both witnesses and protagonists, because film provides us with this limitless scope for interpreting life.
Their works tackle weighty subjects, captured by artists who admirably handle the scriptwriting, artistry and camerawork. The 2024 selection reflects this commitment to supporting courageous, distinctive projects, where hope and art permit the heroes, and the works, to fight the most glorious battles to uphold life.
The committee trusts in the unity that will emerge from these unique encounters, revolving around projects that are so different yet so complementary! We look forward to seeing the results from this successful trio at the Mifa in June!
9th June 2023
Registration opens
10th September 2023
Registration closes
November 2023
Selection announcement
5th April to 28th June 2024
Residency
Head of Film Education & Residency
Film Education & Residency