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Now wrapping its fourth edition, the Annecy Animation Festival’s artistic residency program shepherds selected titles on a development odyssey, hosting filmmakers for a three-month stint at Annecy’s Papeteries Image Factory for tailored, individual mentoring sessions related to screenwriting and graphic development.

The program offers those most precious gifts all – time to explore and grounds to experiment.

Once done, the filmmakers can bring their projects to market, while the festival never lets past laureates fall too far out of sight. A graduate of the residency’s inaugural edition in 2021, director Upamanyu Bhattacharyya later brought his feature “Heirloom” to Annecy’s Cannes showcase in 2023 and will launch production this very month.

“We hope the film will be advanced enough for a Wip screening next year,” says Annecy Residency coordinator Géraldine Baché. “And then, of course, for a festival premiere in 2027!”

There are the three new titles Annecy hopes to accompany...

“Lendarys,” a big-budget family adventure animation film that is currently in production, scored a handful of pre-sales during the Cannes Market. Rights sales are handled by Hong Kong-, Paris and Los Angeles-based All Rights Entertainment.

With a production budget of 30 million, the film is the directorial debut of Philippe Duchene and Jean-Baptiste Cuvelier. Duchene’s previous work includes acting as lead concept designer on the animation hit “Leap!” (aka “Ballerina”) and as a character designer on Netflix’s animated series “Samurai Rabbit: The Usagi Chronicles.”

The film was pre-sold to: Kmbo for France, to Flins & Piniculas for Spain; to Another World Entertainment for Denmark and Norway; to Njuta Films for Sweden; Outsider Films for Portugal; and to Blitz Film for Ex-Yugoslavia territories.

“Lendarys” is a France-Canada co-production produced by Pm S.A. with 2 Minutes Animation acting as line producer, in association with Caramel Films. Delivery is scheduled for...

French director Alain Ughetto’s explores grandparents’s journey as Italian immigrants settling in France at the turn of the 20th-Century.

Paris-based company Indie Sales has signed world sales rights for French filmmaker Alain Ughetto’s animated feature No Dogs Or Italians Allowed ahead of its world premiere in competition at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival (June 13-18).

The stop-motion animation explores the real-life story of Ughetto’s grandparents who left their homeland in the Piedmont region of Italy to settle in France at the turn of 20th century, changing the destiny of his family forever.

French actress Ariane Ascaride...

Hong Kong and Paris-based All Rights Entertainment has picked up a mandate to handle sales duties on “Lendarys,” an animated family entertainment movie that is now in production.

The film is being produced on budget of $30 million and is set for delivery in 2023. All Rights Entertainment is launching the picture for international sales at the European Film Market (EFM), the online companion to this year’s in-person Berlin Film Festival.

“Lendarys” is set in the heart of an imaginary world, where a young and funny wizard apprentice teams up with a hairy and wacky pachyderm who has become tiny, and an outlaw with a mysterious power, on a search for the wizard’s younger brother. They are accompanied by a fantastical animal called a Lendarys. However, when they find the boy’s trail, they discover he has rallied the cause of a strange maleficent creature who is trying to take over their world.

Running Jan. 14-Feb. 14, this year’s MyFrenchFilmFestival, an online fest organized by France’s film-tv promotional body UniFrance, will mark its 12th edition with a more diversified slate and a greater international push.

Showcasing festival gems, animated crowd-pleasers and outré genre fare – all subtitled in 15 languages – the 13 features and 17 shorts of this year’s selection will reach home viewers via 70 partner platforms as well on MyFrenchFilmFestival.com, where all the shorts will be available to screen free of charge.

Though ranging in presentational style from horror-comedy to bittersweet drama, the 10 films in this year’s feature competition often share similar thematic through lines, with nearly half of them looking at youth struggles from one angle or another. While Ludovic and Zoran Boukherma’s werewolf thriller “Teddy” tackles late teen growing pains through a more genre prism, Kamir Aïnouz’s “Honey Cigar” does so as a semi-autobiographical coming-of-age tale; when exploring young adult malaise,...

Paris-based company Indie Sales (“My Life as a Zucchini”) has acquired “Richard the Stork 2,” the sequel to the family animated film which traveled to 155 countries and grossed over $20 million worldwide.

Directed by Mette Rank Tange and Benjamin Quabek, “Richard the Stork 2” follows a daring sparrow, Richard, who was adopted by a stork family and is enjoying wintering at the Great Lake in Northern Africa when he realizes he won’t be the one to lead the flock back north. He runs away to travel on his own and meets Samia and her sparrow flock, who are being held captive by a greedy peacock, Zamano. The sparrows’s only choice to set themselves free is to solve a riddle and find the Great Jewel, which will require teamwork, trust and most of all, spork skills.

“Richard the Stork 2” was written by Reza Memari and Philip Lazebnik. The film is being produced...

Daptone Records will celebrate its 20th anniversary with a new live compilation, The Daptone Super Soul Revue Live at the Apollo, set to arrive October 1st.

The three-lp vinyl was recorded during the Daptone Super Soul Revue’s three-night stand at the Apollo in December 2014. The collection features Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, Charles Bradley, Naomi Shelton, Antibalas, the Budos Band, Menahan Street Band, Sugarman 3, Saun and Starr, and the Como Mamas.

To preview the set, Daptone released two performances: Charles Bradley and his Extraordinaries delivering “Let Love Stand a Chance,...

New independent label will handle sales on five to six high-end animated features a year.

Paris-based sales powerhouse Wild Bunch International (Wbi) and leading French animation distributor Gebeka Films are joining forces to create joint animation world sales label Gebeka International.

“The long-term goal is to handle sales on five to six big independent animated features with festival and awards potential a year,” explained Wbi co-head Vincent Maraval.

He will oversee the new venture with Gebeka Films president Réginald de Guillebon.

Lyon-based Gebeka Films specialises in releasing high-end French and European animated features in France. Past releases include Rémi Chayé’s Calamity,...

This number will increase as Cannes, Venice and other summer festival titles are added to the mix alongside studio releases.

French cinemas reopen this Wednesday (May 19) after lying dark for six months due to the Covid-19 pandemic, with the country’s 100-plus distributors rushing to set theatrical dates for an estimated backlog of 400 stalled films.

As a result, French cinemagoers will have access to the richest and most diverse offering of films in the world over the coming months, spanning festival titles, local mainstream comedies and dramas, world cinema and studio blockbuster fare, as the summer advances.

As of May...

The Flight Attendant actress and executive producer Kaley Cuoco is developing a limited series about Doris Day based on the A.E. Hotchner 1976 bio Doris Day: Her Own Story. Cuoco will star.

Cuoco’s Yes, Norman Productions and Warner Bros. Television are teaming with Berlanti Production again after Flight Attendant. No network is attached as of yet.

Hotchner’s biography is a series of interviews with the Oscar nominated Pillow Talk actress, who was also a singer and animals rights activist. Day lived until 97, and passed away in 2019. She cut her teeth as a singer in show biz before breaking into movie musicals in the 1940s. A big box office star of the 1950s and 1960s her feature credits, included Calamity Jane, Alfred Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much, and The Pajama Game among many others.

During the 1970s, a TV career, which she despised, saved her from financial...

Above: The Nose or Conspiracy of MavericksThe Annecy International Animation film festival—one of the oldest and most important animation festivals in the world—took place online this year, as many other festivals have during the pandemic. Overall the online version of the festival was strong, though it postponed a sidebar on African animation until next summer. But one clear misstep was the presentation of a number of feature films in the competition only as short extracts, or worse, promotions. While this did not diminish the overall quality of the festival’s range of movies, it was certainly dismissive of the audience, especially in the case of the film awarded the Cristal: Calamity, a Childhood of Martha Jane Cannary, directed by Rémi Chayé. That a film only accessible to the jury won the festival’s highest award is problematic. The decision to wait to release the film in theaters is fine,...

“Calamity, a Childhood of Martha Jane Cannary,” the hand-drawn biopic about Martha (Calamity) Jane’s empowering journey West in 1863, from French director Rémi Chayé, won the Cristal Award at the Annecy 2020 Online animation festival. North American theatrical distribution has not been announced but leading contenders include GKids and Shout! Factory, which handled Chayé’s acclaimed Arctic adventure, “Long Way North.”

The Jury Award and Jury Distinction Award went to “The Nose or the Conspiracy of Mavericks,” an experimental drama about Stalin’s reign of terror from Russian director Andrey Khrzhanovsky, and” Kill It and Leave This Town” (Poland), a black-and-white hybrid dystopian drama about a despairing guy who hides in his memories, directed by Mariusz Wilczynski; and the Contrechamp Award and Contrechamp Distinction Award were bestowed on “My Favorite War”, a personal story from director Ilze Burkovska Jacobsen about growing up during the Cold War using cut-outs, and “The Shaman...

“Calamity, a Childhood of Martha Jane Cannary,” the hand-drawn biopic about Martha (Calamity) Jane’s empowering journey West in 1863, from French director Rémi Chayé, won the Cristal Award at the Annecy 2020 Online animation festival. North American theatrical distribution has not been announced but leading contenders include GKids and Shout! Factory, which handled Chayé’s acclaimed Arctic adventure, “Long Way North.”

The Jury Award and Jury Distinction Award went to “The Nose or the Conspiracy of Mavericks,” an experimental drama about Stalin’s reign of terror from Russian director Andrey Khrzhanovsky, and” Kill It and Leave This Town” (Poland), a black-and-white hybrid dystopian drama about a despairing guy who hides in his memories, directed by Mariusz Wilczynski; and the Contrechamp Award and Contrechamp Distinction Award were bestowed on “My Favorite War”, a personal story from director Ilze Burkovska Jacobsen about growing up during the Cold War using cut-outs, and “The Shaman...

Barcelona – Rémi Chayé’s “Calamity, a Childhood of Martha Jane Cannary,” Anca Damian’s “The Island,” Fernando Trueba and Javier Mariscal’s “They Shot the Piano Player,” and Enrique Gato’s “Tad the Lost Explorer and the Curse of the Mummy” are among the sixty-six projects from twenty countries to be pitched at the 22nd Cartoon Movie, Europe’s leading animated movie co-production event. Cartoon Movie will take place in the French port city of Bordeaux, kicking off March 3rd.

Projects will be accessible for buyers and potential partners and will be pitched in different stages of production: 28 in concept, 27 in development, six in production and five sneak previews. The five projects at the sneak preview showcase and the six in production have previously been to Cartoon Movie in preliminary production stages. Twenty-three projects are co-productions.

A family adventure, Rémi Chayé’s (acclaimed “Long Way North”) sophomore feature depicts the...