Animation Is Film (AIF) announced the winners of its sixth annual film festival today, with the feature film Chicken for Linda!, directed by Chiara Malta and Sébastien Laudenbach, winning both the top-level feature film Grand Prize as well as the Audience Award. Neon’s Robot Dreams took home the Special Jury Prize. For the Shorts section, Letter to a Pig won the Grand Prize and Wild Summon earned the Special Jury Prize.
For the 2023 edition, the feature competition titles also included Art College 1994, The Concierge, Mars Express, Phoenix: Reminiscence of Flower, Sirocco and the Kingdom of the Winds and The Summer.
The AIF opening night film The Boy and the Heron and closing night film Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget were not eligible for juried or audience prizes.
From U.S. distributor GKIDS, Chicken for Linda! tells the story of Paulette, who feels guilty after unjustly punishing her daughter Linda and would do anything to make it up to her. Linda immediately asks for a meal of chicken with peppers, which reminds her of the dish her father used to make. But with a general strike closing stores all across town and pushing people into the streets, this innocent request quickly leads to an outrageous series of events that spirals out of control, as Paulette does everything she can to keep her promise and find a chicken for Linda.
“With Chicken for Linda!, Sébastien Laudenbach and Chiara Malta honor the challenges and rewards of being a single parent in a hectic world, employing a visually original artistic style through which lively brush strokes and daubs of color bring relatable human characters (and one very flustered chicken) to vibrant life,” said the Jury.
The Special Jury Prize winner, Robot Dreams, directed by Pablo Berger, is based on the popular graphic novel by the North American writer Sara Varon and tells the adventures and misfortunes of Dog and Robot in N.Y.C. during the ’80s. NEON will release the film theatrically in the U.S.
“In a poignant mix of humor and pathos, director Pablo Berger adapts Sara Varon’s graphic novel, showing how people and places shape our lives, while paying homage to New York City in the 1980s,” the Jury said. “That he conveys this through pantomime and animation, without using dialogue, is all the more remarkable.”
The feature films jury was made up of Peter Debruge (Chief Film Critic, Variety / Jury Chair), Andrew Ruhemann (Oscar-winning director of The Lost Thing), Bill Desowitz (Awards Editor, Craft & Animation at IndieWire), Charles Solomon (Critic and Historian), Marge Dean (Emmy-winning producer and Head of Animation Studio at Skybound Entertainment, President of Women in Animation), Nora Twomey (Oscar-nominated director of The Breadwinner and My Father’s Dragon) and Ramin Zahed (Editor-in-Chief for Animation Magazine).
For Shorts, Letter to a Pig, directed by Tal Kantor, took home the Grand Prize. In this short, a Holocaust survivor writes, after the war, writes a thank-you letter to a pig that saved his life. After his testimony in a classroom, a young student dreams a tragic version of his story.
“Utilizing a unique blend of hand drawn animation, paint on paper and footage segments, Tal Kantor has crafted an extraordinary portrait of trauma and how its aftermath can span generations,” said the Shorts Jury. “It is, in a word: genius.”
The Special Jury Prize for Shorts went to Wild Summon directed by Karni Arieli and Saul Freed. A natural history fantasy film, Wild Summon follows the dramatic life cycle of the wild salmon in human form.
“Karni Arieli and Saul Freed’s Wild Summon is a provocative and creative reimagining of a nature documentary that left us speechless,” said the Shorts Jury.
The short film jury comprised Monica Lago-Kaytis (producer of Wreck-It Ralph and Zootopia, co-founder of Rise Up Animation), Aubry Mintz (Director at the School of Art at CSULB and VP ASIFA-Hollywood) and Pamela Ribon (Oscar-nominated writer of My Year of Dicks and Moana).
AIF hosted several sold-out events throughout the weekend. For opening night, GKIDS presented Studio Ghibli’s The Boy and the Heron, the latest film from legendary filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki, in the festival’s first IMAX premiere at the landmark TCL Chinese Theatre.
In addition, AIF hosted multiple special events and Q&As with influential filmmakers over the course of the weekend, including a “Work-In-Progress” sneak peek at the upcoming studio release of Walt Disney Animation’s Wish alongside a celebration of 100 years of Walt Disney Animation and a special theatrical presentation of its newest short film, Once Upon a Studio with writer/director Chris Buck, director Fawn Veerasunthorn, writer/director Trent Correy, and writer/director Dan Abraham.
“The only metrics we can rely on for determining ‘success’ are audience size and growth, and by both of those standards, the sixth Animation Is Film was a triumph,” stated AIF director Matt Kaszanek. “We are so humbled and gratified at how AIF has been embraced by L.A.’s community of cinephiles. Thank you to our sponsors, our filmmakers, and our audience. We truly could not do this without you.”
The festival also included DreamWorks Animation’s special presentation of its latest film, Trolls Band Together, ahead of its U.S. theatrical release on November 17, the North American Premiere of Sony Pictures Animation/Sony Pictures Imageworks’ short The Spider Within: A Spider-Verse Story and the West Coast and U.S. debuts, respectively, of Neon’s film Robot Dreams (Spain, France) and GKIDS’ Chicken for Linda! (France/Italy).
The festival also presented award-winning shorts films, with directors of The Day I Became a Bird, Starling and Rosemary A.D. (After Dad) participating in a lively Q&A event.
Other special sections included the popular Best of Annecy: Spotlight on Women Directors, presented in partnership with Annecy and Women In Animation; and a centennial celebration of Warner Bros. Animation featuring a special Q&A and screening featuring never-before-seen Looney Tunes Cartoons shorts.
The festival closed with the sold-out Los Angeles premiere of the eagerly-anticipated sequel to the beloved and highest-grossing stop-motion animated film of all time, Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget. Director Sam Fell and executive producer Peter Lord participated in a Q&A following the film.
