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FEATURE


The Suicide Shop


Drawing on success


With a record number of European features headed to the Annecy International Animation Film Festival (June 4-9), Leon Forde reports on the growing ambition of the European animation sector


world stage, with audiences receptive to a new brand of animated features — among them Waltz With Bashir, Persepolis, Chico & Rita and Alois Nebel — that explore decidedly adult worlds. “There is an appetite for animation worldwide,”


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says Janet Healy, producer at Chris Meledandri’s Illumination Entertainment, whose credits include the 2010 hit Despicable Me and this year’s Dr Seuss’ The Lorax. “As audiences see a lot of animation, they want more and it opens up the possibilities for different kinds of animation.” In a crowded marketplace which requires major


spending to compete with studio-released family fare, animation’s widening scope is resulting in a boom in European production — a record 34 Euro- pean features were submitted to this year’s Annecy International Animation Film Festival in France, up from 15 in 2005. “There has always been a terrifi c amount of talent in Europe and more and more pro- ducers are seeing animation as a way to make fi lms,” says Michael Rose of Magic Light Pictures, the UK-


■ 46 Screen International at Cannes May 20, 2012


nce seen as a children’s genre, animation has grown up in recent years to become a commercial and artistic powerhouse on the


based producer on this year’s Oscar-nomi- nated Chico & it R a, which was fi nanced out of Spain and the Isle of Man.


‘More and more producers are seeing animation as a way to make


films’ Michael Rose, Magic Light Pictures


As the possibilities widen for ani- mation, so does the range of talent. A number of established feature directors are making the move into anima- tion, including Patrice Leconte with The Suicide Shop, which opens Annecy this year; The Secret In Their Eyes director Juan Jose Campanella, who is in production on Foosball 3D (Futbolin), a stereoscopic 3D animated adventure set up as an Argentina-Spain co-production; Jonathan Demme with MK2’s Zeitoun; and Incendies director Denis Villeneuve, who is developing novel Footnotes In Gaza with France’s Tu Vas Voir.


“Animation has been thought of as a genre exclusively for children for too long,” says Mickael Marin, head of eco- nomic development and


Mifa at Citia, the company behind the Annecy festival. Films like the Shrek series, which have an appeal and a writing style that can be understood on different levels, or others like The Rabbi’s Cat or more recently Alois Nebel, clearly show that animation is a language like any other used to serve the narrative.”


The fi nancing puzzle


Despite increasing interest, fi nancing can be as complex as ever. “It is a kind of a paradox,” says Alain Gag- nol, writer and co-direc- tor


of graphic Postman Pat: The Movie this year ’s


Oscar-nominated A Cat In Paris, who is cur- rently developing Phan- tom Boy, an animated thriller set in New York. “Many animated fi lms are very successful, so


there are more producers than ever who want to make »


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