L’Alliance New York announces the programs for the eighth edition of Animation First. Created in 2018, the event has grown into the largest animation festival in the United States. The 2025 festival will run from Tuesday, January 21 through Sunday, January 26, and will present seven feature-length films and five short film programs, with a special focus on Swiss animation.
This year’s festival is curated by Delphine Selles-Alvarez and Chloé Dheu. The curators explain, “The 2025 festival offers a bold mix of features, shorts, talks, and VR that range from family-friendly to experimental and off the charts. It’s playful, serious, engaging and at times radical, the festival will transport audiences to places wide and far.”
The festival will open Jan. 21 with the East Coast premiere of Michel Hazanavicius’s The Most Precious of Cargoes (La Plus Précieuse des Marchandises), based on the 2019 novel by Jean-Claude Grumberg, which follows a poor Polish couple whose rescue of a baby thrown from a train en route to Auschwitz changes their lives forever. Hazanavicius will participate in a Q&A following the film.
The centerpiece feature on Jan. 24, will be the U.S. premiere of Claude Barras’s Savages (Sauvages). This stop-motion ecological tale centers on a young girl named Kéria, her adopted baby orangutan, Oshi, and her cousin Selaï, who must fight back against the planned destruction of Borneo’s ancestral forest.
The closing night film on Jan. 26, will be the recently restored The Time Masters (Les Maîtres du temps), shown with the U.S. premiere of the short The Machine-Men (Les Hommes Machines), both by visionary science-fiction animator René Laloux (Fantastic Planet). The Time Masters is a visual foray into an existentialist space adventure, and, in a similar vein, The Machine-Men serves as the pilot for the cult hit Gandahar, whose restored version was screened at last year’s Animation First.
Additional feature screenings include the U.S. premiere of the restoration of René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo’s classic The Twelve Tasks of Asterix (Les Douze travaux d’Astérix), the beloved family film My Life as a Zucchini (Ma vie de Courgette) by Claude Barras, the N.Y. premiere of Bertrand Dezoteux’s Harmony (Harmonie), and the N.Y. premiere of Yuku and the Himalayan Flower (Yuku et la fleur de l’Himalaya), by directors Rémi Durin and Arnaud Demuynck.
Special to this year will be the U.S. premiere of the first episode of an animated French TV series, The Legends of Paris (L’Armée des Romantiques), by Amélie Harrault. The festival’s five short film programs include The Best of Annecy 2024, New Francophone Shorts 1 and 2, Caught in the Moving Sand: The Films of Gisèle and Nag Ansorge and Marina Rosset: The Enchanting Power of Animation. Both the Both Caught in Moving Sand and The Enchanting Power of Animation programs are part of this year’s focus on Swiss animation.
For the second year in a row, L’Alliance New York will present a limited-edition Animation First series poster. This year’s guest artist is Swiss animator and director Georges Schwizgebel — the poster will be revealed soon over social media! Like last year, Animation First will have a juried competition for its New Francophone Shorts program. The jury will be made up of industry professionals, including animators Bill Plympton and Noelle Melody and artist Karlotta Freier.
L’Alliance New York is bringing back the Animation Speak/Easy for a second year. The gathering will include guest artists who share an inspiring animated short, followed by an audience discussion. Also returning will be the Animation Jam, the 48-hour student exercise to complete an animation sequence, and free VR experiences in L’Alliance New York Library, including the U.S. premiere of Boris Labbé’s Ito’s Meikyū.
And, the program will present many filmmaker talks, which will include a first look at Momoko Seto’s Dandelion’s Odyssey (France & Belgium), and discussions with animators Boris Labbé, Kristof Serrand and Georges Schwizgebel, as well as a professional panel and numerous Q&As following festival films.
Passes for Animation First and more information are now available through L’Alliance New York’s website.
