Annecy Animation Festival

Animation festival big outdoor screen
Annecy was humming with throngs of tourists this week for the annual Animation Festival, now in its 49th year — pretty impressive considering how recent an artform it is. Along with a huge variety of full-length movies on offer, the timetable includes nightly screenings of a group of short animations. These can be from around 30 seconds to a rather annoyingly long 45 minutes. They can be great and they can be terrible. Many of the animators watching at the festival will get a kick out of a movie that is completely boring to the average punter like myself, and vice versa. I saw just one set of short films this year, and it was a mixed bag of good and bad. What really surprised me was that none of them had any sort of meaningful story line. Perhaps the symbolism was lost on me, but I suspect it was also lost on many others during one short film — the last of the evening — when more than half the people in the cinema walked out. I stayed to the end and was disappointed. Alas, I would have been curious to know the ‘ending’ (if I can even call it that) had I not stayed.

So, Saturday night can also be hit and miss: a large outdoor cinema is provided free to the public to watch one animated movie per night during the festival. On Saturday night, one of the prize-winning films from the week-long festival is selected for viewing. It’s a surprise! You have to have the right balance of movie, weather and audience for this to work. Before night falls by the big screen, right by the lake on Le Pâquier, groups gather to picnic on the grass and watch the pre-movie entertainment while the sun sets on the nearby mountains. The film this year was Coraline, which is a lovely dark fairytale about a girl who is unhappy with her parents until she’s lured into an alternative world. The weather was great and the lawn was packed with lovely quiet people who mostly stayed seated on their rugs. And like a fairytale city, Annecy today transformed back into pre-festival goodness, as if it was all a dream.

I snapped a few photos from where I was sitting. The gaps where the grass is visible in the first photo were all filled by people within an hour. You can click on each image for a larger photo.

Annecy mountains during Annecy Animation FestivalThe band on stage are dwarfed by the big screen. The sun starts to set on the mountains around Annecy.

Annecy dusk during animation festivalThe trailers before the main movie starts, with flags off to the left illuminated. Everyone stayed seated, thankfully.

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About

I'm a technical author, journalist and writer from Australia who has been living in Europe since 2000 and exploring the world from there. My passions are writing, snow sports and travel.