Roy Disney and his wife, Patricia. Mike Gabriel accepting his prize.

While there were no big breaking films this year to create a stir (the opening night film was Tokyo Godfathers), people were treated to a surprise screening of the Oscar-nominated short Boundin' from Pixar. Roy Disney and his wife seated down front in support his last short film at the Walt Disney Co., Lorenzo, directed by Mike Gabriel.

This year, I've noticed that each big event has a certain animal that seems to dominate the offerings. From NATPE it was monkeys, MIP-TV had dragons, but films with felines where the cats meow at Annecy. In fact, the 2D cat movie, Lorenzo, won the Grand Prix Annecy Crystal in a close contest with the 3D computer-animated Ryan by Chris Landreth (about the life of NFB animator Ryan Larkin). Ryan was given the Special Jury Award. Both were consistently mentioned by attendees in their favorites, many thought the ambitious Ryan would take top prize. So much so that Gabriel had already departed for the U.S. before the final awards ceremony. He and producer Baker Bloodworth were informed on Friday that "it would behoove" them to return immediately for the awards ceremony Saturday night.

While 2D theatricals are still quite a viable, commercial success in Europe, the judges appeared to be politically reacting to the declaration from big studios in the U.S. that 2D was dead in favor of 3D. They said the pencil is still the most important tool of animators.

Yet many stalwarts of 2D, such as Gene Deitch, expressed they were overwhelmed with the beauty and power of Ryan. Deitch said it can take many years before one sees a film of such vision, originality and excellent execution in all areas that it catapults one into a new realm of filmmaking he said.

Chris Landreth accepts his award. Gene Deitch and Zdenka Najmanova, who felt that Ryan was a revelation.

Another clear favorite was the black-and-white 2D The Crab Revolution by Arthur de Pns, which won the Audience Award. Another one that received the top prize from schoolchildren at the Festival lets the Jica Enfants was Pantoffelhelden by Susan Seidel (Germany), a beautifully executed 2D student work about a little frog who catches sight of a fake frog on a pair of slippers, fails in love with her and tries to rescue her. The execution and storytelling was superior to 80% of the professional shorts.

While a bit long, an important double winner was Daughter - A Story of Incest, produced by the NGO non-profit organization Stairway Foundation in the Philippines, to help kids recognize child sexual abuse and encourage them to report past or present traumatic experiences. The Open Workshop at The Animation Workshop in Denmark supported the film, directed by its recent graduate Paw Charlie Ravn. It won for Best Educational Film and The UNICEF Awards for outstanding work for the rights of children. Simply and beautifully told, they hope the use of animation helps break the taboo around children sexual abuse.

Artistic director Serge Bromberg hosted the closing awards ceremony, donned in a kimono, in a well-paced presentation that called the winners to assemble on the beautifully red, Asian-themed stage, where they sat on low benches and drank tea during the awarding of the trophies.

In the feature film category, momentum built as the week went on for Bill Plympton's American teen, gothic Hair High (USA), while Filmax heavily promoted Jose Pozo's El Cid: The Legend (Spain). Also in the running was Daniel Robichaud's Pinocchio 3000 (Canada) and Maurizio Forestieri's Toto Sapore e la magica storia della pizza (Italy) but was Baek-yeop Sung's Oseam (South Korea) that took the prize.

Asian animators, outside of Japan, had a much greater presence at the festival. There were special presentations of works from Korean and Taiwan, displaying skillful talent but still some cultural problems understanding the stories.