Checkered Ninja c LevelK

Source: LevelK

‘Checkered Ninja’

Anders Matthesen and Thorbjørn Christoffersen’s Checkered Ninja, which has taken the Danish box office by storm, will be one of eight features showcased in the Annecy Festival’s new-look Features competition section for animated films later this year (June 10-15). 

The Features line-up also includes three titles from Japan – Masaaki Yuasa’s Ride Your Wave, Yuhei Sakuragi’s The Relative Worlds and Keiichi Hara’s The Wonderland.

Annecy has also introduced a parallel competition called Contrechamp, ’for the most unique feature films, as well as those that create more challenges vis-à-vis the audience’, said the festival.

The eight animated films in the section include Sung-yoon Oh and Chun-baek Lee’s Underdog, which opened the prestigious Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival in 2018.

Features

  • Buñuel in the Labyrinth of Turtles, Salvador Simo – Spain, Netherlands
  • Marona’s Fantastic Tale, Anca Damian – Belgium, France, Romania
  • Checkered Ninja, Anders Matthesen, Thorbjørn Christoffersen – Denmark
  • Ride Your Wave, Masaaki Yuasa – Japan
  • The Bears Famous Invasion, Lorenzo Mattotti – France, Italy
  • The Relative Worlds, Yuhei Sakuragi – Japan
  • The Wonderland, Keiichi Hara – Japan
  • White Snake, Kahong Wong, Ji Zhao – China

Contrechamp

  • Away, Gints Zilbalodis – Latvia
  • Children of the Sea, Ayumu Watanabe – Japan
  • Day of the Dead, Carlos Gutiérrez – Mexico
  • Homeless, José Ignacio, Navarro Cox, Jorge Campusano, Santiago O’Ryan – Chile
  • Kung Food, Haipeng Sun – China
  • Underdog, Sung-yoon Oh, Chun-baek Lee – South Korea
  • Ville Neuve, Félix Dufour-Laperrière – Canada
  • Zero Impunity, Nicolas Blies, Stéphane Hueber-Blies, Denis Lambert – France, Luxembourg
  • Jim Broadbent, Sally Hawkins, Kristen Wiig join cast of Matt Haig adaptation A Boy Called Christmas