France’s Rémi Chayé, Belgium’s JanBultheel, and German animation trio Michael Ekblad, Ted Sieger and Matthias Bruhn are nominated for Director of the Year at 2016 co-production forum for European animated features.
The nominations for the Cartoon Movie Tributes, which reward a leading individual or company that has had a dynamic and positive influence on the European animated feature-film industry, have been revealed. The names of the winners will be announced on March 4 in Lyon at the 18th edition of Cartoon Movie (running March 2-4, 2016), the co-production forum for European animated features.
Featuring in the Best European Director of the Year category are France’s Rémi Chayé (for Long Way North -- winner of the Audience Award at Annecy in 2015 and the Young Audience Award at Anima in 2016 -- released in France on January 27), Belgium’s JanBultheel (for Cafard and its revolutionary motion capture system), and the trio comprising Michael Ekblad, Ted Sieger and Matthias Bruhn for the German production Ted Sieger’s Molly Monster – The Movie, which has just had its world premiere in the Generation Kplus section of the 2016 Berlin Film Festival.
The nominees for the Cartoon Movie Tribute for European Producer of the Year are French outfit Ankama Animations (which hails from the video-game world, and has just made a splash with its first cinematic effort, the feature debut Dofus – Book 1: Julith, and is preparing Mutafukaz), Italy’s MAD Entertainment (The Art of Happiness, Cinderella the Cat and the forthcoming A Skeleton Story) and a four-company partnership (involving Germany’s Ulysses Filmproduktion, Luxembourg’s Fabrique d’images, Belgium’s Grid Animation and Ireland’s Moetion Films) for Ooops! Noah Is Gone...
Lastly, the Best European Distributor of the Year Award will pit Paris-based firm La Belle Company (which produced the Maya the Bee Movie, a smash hit in French theatres last year, and is a partner on Loving Vincent, a project in production) against Turkey’s Bir Film and Denmark’s SF Film.
Source: Cartoon Movie
Formerly Editor-in-Chief of Animation World Network, Jennifer Wolfe has worked in the Media & Entertainment industry as a writer and PR professional since 2003.
