The National Film Board of Canada will take part in this year’s Annecy International Animation Film Festival (June 9–15) with a lineup of 11 productions and co-productions, screening across a wide range of sections at the event. Four films have been selected for various competitions, including Torill Kove’s Maybe Elephants, which will be having its world premiere. In addition, Michèle Lemieux, a virtuoso with the Alexeïeff-Parker pinscreen, will present her latest short, Le tableau (The Painting).
The festival will also be presenting an Honorary Cristal award to filmmaker Pierre Hébert to mark his 60-year career, including 35 years with the NFB.
Additionally, award-winning animation filmmaker (and Annecy regular) Claude Cloutier is a jury member at this year’s festival.
Short Films – Official Competition
Maybe Elephants by Torill Kove (Mikrofilm/NFB) – WORLD PREMIERE
In the ’70s, three rebellious teenage daughters, a restless mother, a father struggling with potatoes, and maybe some elephants, find themselves in bustling Nairobi. The family will never be the same.
Created by Oscar-winning animator Torill Kove (The Danish Poet), Maybe Elephants is a playful and loving autobiographical homage to family, adolescence and the therapeutic power of memories, however unreliable.
Le tableau (The Painting) by Michèle Lemieux (NFB)
An animated short film created using the legendary Alexeïeff-Parker pinscreen, The Painting revisits the destiny of Queen Mariana of Austria through her 1652 portrait by Velázquez. Married at the age of 14 to her uncle Philip IV of Spain, who was 30 years her senior, Mariana had a bleak destiny: her five children, marked by generations of inbreeding, either died in infancy or were unfit to rule, ultimately ending the Spanish Habsburg dynasty.
Miserable Miracle by Ryo Orikasa (Miyu Productions/NFB/New Deer)
Directed by Japanese filmmaker Ryo Orikasa, the animated short Miserable Miracle was inspired by Henri Michaux’s book of poetry and drawings of the same name. Masterful in both vision and execution, the film explores the limits of language and perception, creating dazzling connections between sound, meaning, shapes and movement. Propelling viewers beyond the page, guided by Tony Robinow’s feverish voiceover, the poems map the human psyche to the very edges of alienation and transcendence.
Short Films – Off-Limits Competition
Corpus and the Wandering by Jo Roy (NFB)
Modern society lives on the grid. Phone screens, conference calls, cubicles, apartment windows. We are systemically divided by a culture that profits from our collective alienation. When the COVID pandemic first hit, director and dancer Jo Roy was inspired to create a world transcending this insidious framework of consumerism and patriarchy. The result: Corpus and the Wandering, an experimental self-portrait that follows one woman’s journey as she rediscovers her inner compass and kinship with nature. Using only her own body and her iPhone, Roy transforms a 100-screen “videomosaic” grid into a wonderland of the Earth and beyond.
Annecy Classics
Graver l’homme: arrêt sur Pierre Hébert (Scratches of Life: The Art of Pierre Hébert) by Loïc Darses (NFB)
Since the 1960s, celebrated animator Pierre Hébert has experimented with the full gamut of styles, from abstract animation to more narrative approaches, as well as collage, drawing and live performance. Employing an arresting black-and-white palette punctuated with animated flourishes, Scratches of Life: The Art of Pierre Hébert unwinds the thread of the scratch-on-film technique, guiding us through the inspiring labyrinth of Hébert’s life and work.
Special Program – Choreographies: Animation and Dance
LOCA by Véronique Paquette (NFB)
A female silhouette, sketched with fine white lines, disintegrates. A few bars ring out from “Loca” — a classic tune from the golden age of Argentinean tango.
- Pas de deux by Norman McLaren (NFB, 1968)
- Carface by Claude Cloutier (NFB, 2015)
Special Program – A Tribute to Portuguese Animation
Regina Pessoa
- Tragic Story with Happy Ending (Folimage/Ciclope Filmes/NFB, 2005) – Winner of the 2006 Annecy Cristal
- Kali the Little Vampire (Folimage/Ciclope Filmes/NFB, 2012)
- Uncle Thomas: Accounting for the Days (Ciclope Filmes/NFB/Les Armateurs, 2019)
