Jonas Geirnaert's Flatlife found crazy links in a “four-room-on-screen” set-up. © Jonas Geirnaert.

Greaves’ film found counterparts of sorts in a couple of the European films, Francois Roux’s delightfully silly Blues Stories (which used vocal sound effects that should translate to most cultures on the planet) and Jonas Geirnaert’s Belgian Flatlife, which found fantastical potentials and crazy links in a “four-room-on-screen” set-up. I wasn’t so taken with the other programs I saw, though Dying of Love (by the Spanish Gil Alkabetz) was a nicely bittersweet 2D love story told through the eyes of two caged parrots who inadvertently reveal a dreadful secret, while Arthur de Pins served up the charmingly po-faced French Revolution of the Crabs.

Meanwhile, Francis Nielsen was on hand to introduce his feature film, The Dog, the General and the Birds, a tale of 19th-century St Petersburg with designs inspired by Chagall. I was only able to see the first 40 minutes, but frankly, it seemed mediocre at best, and far from Triplettes of Belleville.

The awards audience was treated to a tantalizing few minutes of Nick Park’s latest effort, the long-awaited Wallace and Gromit feature, subtitled, Curse of the Were-Rabbit. © Aardman Animation. Courtesy of DreamWorks.

Saturday evening saw a lively awards ceremony with three separate prizes given out. The heftily-named OLC/Rights Entertainment International Newcomer Award is a Japanese prize, presented by the company’s president Tadaki Okada. The winner, chosen by the festival jury, was Oury Atlan’s Overtime, a CGI film that left me gaping at the sheer effrontery of what some viewers (and Jim Henson fans in particular) might easily take as monumental bad taste, or — as it was no doubt intended — as a fantastical elegy to the puppet genius. (Overtime was one of two ostentatiously monochrome CGI fantasies at the festival, the other being Marc Craste’s award-winning U.K. JoJo in the Stars, which I found superficially impressive but unmemorable). Meanwhile, the Children’s Award, chosen by 11- to 18-year-olds, went to Paul Taylor’s shamelessly enjoyable prehistoric crowd-pleaser, In the Rough.

Finally, the overall audience award — and this year’s British nomination for the Cartoon D’or —went to Through My Thick Glasses, a Canadian-Norwegian wartime memoir directed by Pjotr Sapegin. A 3D model film, it successfully balanced Aardman-style whimsy with heartfelt eulogy. It was nice to see a stop-frame film triumph in Aardman’s hometown, before the awards audience was treated to a tantalizing few minutes of Nick Park’s latest effort, the long-awaited Wallace and Gromit feature, subtitled Curse of the Were-Rabbit. And how do the prospects look? Well, enough to say that everything the Oscar-winning Close Shave did for sheep, Were-Rabbit promises to do for bunnies…

Andrew Osmond is a freelance writer specializing in fantasy media and animation.