Reflecting the strong French animation market, over a quarter of the 47 animation feature projects looking for financing or distribution at this year's Cartoon Movie market in Babelsberg (March 13-15) have been initiated by French animation studios.

Among the 13 French projects, four are from Les Armateurs (Crossroad - The Devil's Music, The Evolution Man, Charley & Mimmo, and the Danish-French co-production The Boy Who Wanted To Be A Bear) and two from PRIMA Feature Animation (Angkor and The Black Turtle).

Spanish studios are represented with nine projects, followed by Denmark with five, and the UK and Germany with four each. In addition, the first East European country will be participating in the Cartoon Movie event this year with the screening of the Polish studio Studio Minatur Filmowych's Mr.Blott's Triumph in the completed films section.

According to co-organiser Michael Schmetz, an innovation this year was the creation of an international jury to make a more rigorous selection of the feature projects "to see which ones fulfil the criteria and what is really only straight to video or for television."