Cartoon Movie reveals winners, upcoming animations

The Swiss-French animated feature My Life As A Courgette picked up two of the Cartoon Tributes at the 19th edition of Cartoon Movie (March 8-10) after voting by the co-production market’s participants.

The distinction of European producer of the year went to Max Karli and Pauline Gygax’s Geneva-based Rita Productions together with their French partners Blue Spirit Productions and distributor Gebeka Films for the stop-motion comedy-drama, which faced stiff competition from the production teams of Richard The Stork and Ethel & Ernest.

In addition, the animation community gathered in Bordeaux voted Courgette’s director Claude Barras as European director of the year.

My Life As a Courgette won Césars in France last month for best animated feature and best adapted screenplay after receiving the European Film Award for best European animated feature in Wroclaw in December and being nominated for a best animated feature Oscar.

Meanwhile, the Cartoon Tribute for European distributor of the year went to the Danish arthouse distributor Angel Films whose animation label Rabalder Bio has released My Life As A Courgette in Scandinavian countries alongside other European animated features such as Ernest & Celestine and Tad, The Lost Explorer.

Vampires, Caravans and Pixar vet

Around 30 projects from the stage of initial concept to post-production were presented on the first day of Cartoon Movie by producers from India, Canada, Georgia, and Ukraine as well traditional animation producing territories such as France, Germany, Belgium, the UK, Denmark and Ireland.

CMG’s Edward Noeltner unveiled proposed marketing measures to accompany the Halloween 2017 release of the Dutch-German-Danish co-production The Little Vampire which he has sold to 80 countries.

The 27 distributors lined up to release the film directed by A. Film’s Karsten Killerich and Comet Film’s Richard Claus include France’s TF1 Studio, Germany’s Universum Film and Russia’s Big Movie, with the UK’s Icon Film Distribution set to be the first to release the film on October 20 ahead of Halloween. Noeltner revaled that The Little Vampire’s official trailer is set to have its premiere in Cannes in May.

In his pitch of Two Caravans, an animated adaptation of Marina Lewycka’s bestselling novel about two immigrant strawberry pickers in Kent falling in love, producer Robert Chandler of the UK’s Blue Zoo Animation Studios revealed that Bankside Films are already onboard the project as a sales agent.

Swedish distributor Folkets Bio has already committed to release Barry O’Donoghue’s €1.5m family animation feature Little Caribou which was presented by the director-producer Dingle-based Barley Films as aproject in development after having been introduced as a concept at the 2011 edition of Cartoon Movie.

Donoghue said during his pitch in Bordeaux that 70% of the film’s budget is in place from Irish sources including the Section 41 tax credit, and the award-winning Irish singer-composer Cathy Davey will be providing the original score and songs for the film.

Cartoon Movie’s first day of presentations also included the first Georgian feature-length CG animated film, Dato Kiknavelidze’s €3.2m Geno, by Lira Production Studios; ex-Pixar veteran Rob Gibb’s animation feature directorial debut $15.7m Hump, set to begin production in spring 2018 for Berlin-based MovieBrats Pictures, Belgium’s Walking The Dog, and Canada’s Tangent Animation; and Jerome Combe and Barbara Israel’s €6-7m 2D/3D feature Miss Saturne, a tale of bitter-sweet adolescence and new wave music set in 1980s Nice, for France’s Prima Linea Productions and Fortiche Production with Belgium’s Artemis Productions.