The Process of Art at Annecy Animation Festival

The Annecy International Animation Film Festival feels as though it’s about the process as much as it is the exhibition of animation. Now in its 66^th year, the festival taking place in the French alpine city has changed and grown substantially across the last couple of decades, even just in the last few years, as many of the biggest animation studios and distributors from Hollywood have begun to take centre stage in the Bonlieu Scène Nationale, the main venue. Yet, even as the festival has become a home for splashy announcements and slate presentations, there remains a space carved out for seeing strange and idiosyncratic animation like in the ​“WTF” shorts screenings and other presentations of boundary-pushing short films. Another venue, called the Salle Pierre Lamy (about a 10 minute walk from the Bonlieu), houses one of my favourite strands: the festival’s Work in Progress sessions.

Each is an hour and 15 minutes long, with the directors and creative leads talking through the making of their production, often broken down into pre-production (including look development and storyboarding, animatics), production (animation!) and post production (compositing, etc), depending on how far along the project is. This is, after all, a festival which has its eyes on education of its large demographic of students and industry hopefuls as much as it does exhibition and sales, so even the most minute details are sure to be included.

It’s probably one of the most exciting things about Annecy, perhaps more so than the idyllic lakeside views, that its exhibition of animated film sits side by side with the ability to see these works broken down into their components in its Work in Progress strand, and both are greeted with equal fervour. In 2023, for example, Nickelodeon screened Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem while it was still being finished, as they recognised that the crowd would appreciate it anyway. It’s not often that you can find the aesthetic appeal of a feature which is still being made – it’s something which feels exclusive to animation and therefore unique to Annecy in getting to experience this at scale.