The Annecy International Animation Film Festival is a major showcase for new animated movies, shorts and TV series. It offers extensive previews through its Works in Progress panels. Last year's selection included early looks at such masterpieces like Wolfwalkers and The Mitchells vs. The Machines, and this year's selection looks just as promising. This article provides an overview of all the Work in Progress panels CBR had the chance to watch during the festival, but the digital version of Annecy 2021 was plagued by technical issues, so not everything could be seen.
At the time of this writing, there isn't an English translation uploaded for the panel on Mars Express. The panel for the Haruki Murakami adaptation Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman is also not yet available to stream, but the festival says it's in the process of editing it. Fortunately, even though the festival is over, all panels will be available for attendees to stream for the rest of the year.
Fena: Pirate Princess
With Uzumaki delayed to 2022, Fena: Pirate Princess is Toonami and Crunchyroll’s first original anime co-production this summer. Director Kazuto Nakazawa was inspired by the aftermath of Japan’s Sengoku period and how some samurai left to serve as mercenaries around the world. Though inspired loosely by history, Fena is a fantasy where places are "used as motifs, and everything in the story is fictitious." The most thorough research was in scouting real locations for the background art, which looks gorgeous. Nakazawa was inspired by shojo manga for the characters, which he collaborated on with a female designer, Yasuko Takahashi. Unusual for an anime series, the voice actors could ad-lib, and the final animation was adjusted to their performances.
Maya and the Three
Maya and the Three is a nine-part, all-ages, CG fantasy mini-series inspired by Mesoamerican culture. Creator Jorge Gutierrez, who directed The Book of Life, thought he couldn’t get this made; he got lucky when Netflix Animation head Melissa Cobb asked him for unproducible pitches. Gutierrez’s wife, Sandra Equihua, serves as character designer and creative consultant, and much of the panel was dedicated to showcasing her stunning design work, which the couple joked were "a new challenge" for cosplayers. Two exclusive clips were shown: the first involved the warrior princess, Maya, receiving her mother’s armor and her dad’s weapon, while the second showcased Maya’s first battle against Acat, the goddess of tattoos.
The Peasants
Loving Vincent had its issues in terms of storytelling but was an artistic accomplishment for its oil-paint rotoscope animation. The Peasants, being made by Loving Vincent’s co-director Dorota Kobiela and the same animation team, uses the same mind-blowing technique while adapting Władysław Reymont’s classic novel. Adapting 1,000-pages of source material required a lot of cutting, so Kobiela and screenwriter Hugh Welchman focused on the "quirky, little bit goth" character of Jagna while giving her a more active arc than in the novel. Drawing inspiration from Polish paintings, the filmmakers were less beholden to strict recreations than they were for Loving Vincent. Clips of the film’s dance scenes were shown, though these clips were in live-action form and have yet to be rotoscoped.
Samurai Rabbit: The Usagi Chronicles
Based on Stan Sakai's Usagi Yojimbo, Samurai Rabbit: The Usagi Chronicles is a 20-episode French-American co-production coming to Netflix. It’s primarily CGI, though there are 2D limited-animation sequences. The series is set 1000 years after the comics, and to attract a kid audience, a new team of teenagers are introduced, and the action draws less from Japanese samurai movies and more from Hong Kong action cinema. The new protagonist, Yuichi Usagi, grew up idolizing his ancestor, Miyamoto, and wants to be like him. The first arc is about yokai, while the second has more pop culture influences with giant robots and kaiju. Sakai has complete approval over every step of the production process and says, "I love what’s been happening so far with the series."
Perlimps
Ale Abreu, director of the Oscar-nominated Boy and the World, Zoomed in from Brazil to reveal his next film, Perlimps. A more traditional narrative than Boy and the World, Perlimps is about a wolf boy, Claé, and a bear girl, Bruô, who come from enemy kingdoms but find themselves working together in the Enchanted Forest to save the Perlimps. What exactly are Perlimps? The presentation didn't offer a clear answer, but it seems they're something to do with light and energy. However, after watching one of the more polished video presentations, which showcased tons of colorful art and otherworldly music, audiences are curious to uncover the mysteries of the Perlimps when the film is released next year.
Unicorn Wars
Unicorn Wars is the new feature from Alberto Vázquez, the Spanish artist who created and co-directed Birdboy: The Forgotten Children. Unicorn Wars continues Birdboy’s cute-but-twisted aesthetic in a "fantasy-Vietnam" story about hand-drawn, all-male teddy bears at war with computer-animated, all-female unicorns. The film's described as a cross between Apocalypse Now, Bambi and The Bible -- which Vázquez described as one of his "favorite fiction books." The Work In Progress panel screened the already-released teaser trailer as well as some unfinished clips showcasing the film’s violence, crude humor and mix of art styles, and the soundtrack combines elements of electronic and religious music.
Robin Robin
Aardman Animation’s next project Robin Robin, a half-hour holiday special about a bird adopted by mice, is coming to Netflix on November 27. The adorable trailer shows this is somewhat of a departure visually for Aardman, with the characters having felted textures rather than plasticine ones. In their presentation, directors Mikey Please and Dan Ojari showed how the story evolved from an initial storybook pitch to full animation. Rather than using temp music, the short was developed from the beginning with The Bookshop Band’s musical score.
The Siren
The Siren, directed by Sepideh Farsi, is a drama about a teenage boy living through the 1980 Siege of Abadan in the Iran-Iraq War. Farsi usually directs live-action films, in particular documentaries, but she decided animation was the best way to accurately recreate the time period and capture the clarity of her memories of the war. The animation style is unusual and cool-looking, wherein detailed CGI designs are simplified and shaded with stylized flat colors.
Nayola
Nayola was also among the more serious-minded animated films presented at Annecy. Based on the play The Black Box by Eduardo Agualusa and Mia Couto, the movie tells the story of three generations of women living through the civil war in Angola. Director José Miguel Ribeiro had the story pitched to him by a friend who wanted to do it as a live-action/animation hybrid. The final film is a hybrid of 2D animation in the past and 3D animation in the present. Ribeiro said it’s important that the story presented the war from women’s perspectives, focused on the horror and free from any notions of heroic machismo.
Little Nicholas
Little Nicholas, directed by Benjamin Massoubre and Amandine Fredon, is a metafictional adaptation of a classic series of French children’s books. The film cuts back and forth between the true story of the books' authors, Jean-Jacques Sempé and René Goscinny, and the stories from their books, with the mischievous Little Nicholas crossing over from the world of the stories into the real world. The hand-drawn animation faithfully recreates the style of Sempé’s original illustrations, and some animatic clips were shown during the panel, but no English translations were provided.
Princess Dragon
Princess Dragon is a French fantasy film directed by Jean-Jacques Denis and Wakfu’s Anthony Roux. The fairy tale, about a dragon who adopts a human girl, was inspired by Roux’s family’s fertility struggles. Denis emphasized this is a film meant first and foremost for children, though whole families can enjoy it. The art and animation have a soft, Studio Ghibli-esque vibe, mostly hand-drawn but with a CG dragon.
The House
The House is an adult-oriented, dark-comedy, stop-motion anthology coming to Netflix. It contains three stories, each from the perspective of the same house inhabited by different people and animals in the past, present and future. Emma De Swaef, Marc James Roels, Niki Lindroth von Bahr and Paloma Baeza direct the different segments, while Matthew Goode, Jarvis Cocker and Helena Bonham-Carter are among the unconventional animated project's extensive cast.