Annecy International Film Festival, taking place this week in France, is on track to be the biggest edition yet, surpassing last year’s record attendance when 17,400 badge holders and 125,000 total visitors took part in the seven-day festival.
Running from June 8-14, the festival’s artistic director Marcel Jean, is proud Annecy remains a popular festival for both independent titles and high-profile studio showcases. One of those independent films is Andy Serkis’s Animal Farm, which Jean described on stage on June 9 as a ‘preview’, but was the world premiere.
Produced by Serkis’s Imaginarium Productions, with fellow UK companies Aniventure and Cinesite, Jean describes it as “one of the most exciting discoveries of the festival”.
Another independent title is Toby Genkel’s High In The Clouds, based on Paul McCartney’s 2005 children’s book, with a voice cast that includes McCartney, fellow Beatle Ringo Starr, Celine Dion and Lionel Richie.
The independent productions sit alongside studio showcases of both completed and in-the-works titles. Sony chose Annecy to announce the cast for sports comedy GOAT, led by basketball star Stephen Curry and Stranger Things alumnus Caleb McLaughlin.
Paramount’s showcase today will include peeks at Chris Miller’s Smurfs, andThe SpongeBob Movie while Universal is promoting The Bad Guys 2 on Wednesday.
Further presentations include Netflix later today (June 10) while Friday is Disney day, with a look at Zootopia 2 and separate presentation headed by Pixar’s chief creative officer Pete Docter, including a first look at Toy Story 5.
Annecy dips into live-action on occasion and is screening DreamWorks’ How To Train Your Dragon ahead of its global rollout next weekend. “This [originally animated] franchise [is part of the] recent history of Annecy,” says Jean of the choice to play the film. “Dean [DeBlois, director] is a longtime companion of the festival – it was impossible for us not to be with him.”
Education and training are key to Annecy’s existence: 24% of attendees last year were students, with many coming to the French lakeside town for the first time. “If you really want to watch something, go to the theatre an hour-and-a-half before, bring a book with you, and wait,” offered Jean as advice to first-time attendees. “There are lots of people who have tickets but are really busy doing business; don’t stress and just go with the flow.”
The rise in attendance brings its own challenges. Monday was especially busy in town, when the Whit Monday national holiday in France combined with an international volleyball tournament on Le Paquier park brought thousands of people to the town centre.
What Jean describes an attack from “bots that do hundreds of requests in a few seconds” brought down the ticketing system on June 4 when it opened for badgeholders. The system was disabled for two hours, Jean says, before its restoration. “Thousands of people arrive on the site at the same time and are looking for tickets for the same events – it’s an incredible charge on the system.” The Annecy ticketing system is structured in such a way that the brief closure did not affect the availability of tickets for different categories of badgeholder.
“Even if it shuts down, you can’t have another badgeholder take your tickets because quotas are assigned to a certain kind of badge.”
Jean adds “almost all” on-sale tickets sold out ahead of the festival.
Year-round festival
The festival director is now looking forward to the opening in 2026 of Annecy’s International City of Animation Cinema venue. Built on the site of a former horse stud farm near the town centre, the International City is on track to open in May 2026, at a cost of €50.5m ($57.6m). Dedicated entirely to animation, the venue will include an extensive museum, with over 8,000 pieces, a 700m² exhibition space capable of holding temporary showcases, a 332-seat cinema, and a shop and food hall.
“Annecy is the world capital of animation for one week a year right now,” says Jean. “We want to extend that to the whole year. It will be possible to keep busy activity all year long, to make sure the community of animation who come to France have a place to go that feels like their home.”
The festival will demonstrate the progress of the site with a tour tomorrow (Wednesday, June 11), to which it has invited this year’s guests, including Michel Gondry, UK director Joanna Quinn, and The Simpsons creator Matt Groening.
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