Swiss director Claude Barras named director of the year for the Oscar-nominated ‘My Life as a Zucchini’ alongside producers of the year Rita Productions, Blue Spirit Productions & Gebeka Films.
CARTOON MOVIE, the European pitching and co-production forum for animated features, has announced the winners for Cartoon Tributes 2017, which award outstanding contributions to the development of European animation over the last year.
The awards for Director, Distributor and Producer of the Year were handed out at a ceremony held on Friday, March 10. Swiss director Claude Barras was named director of the year for the Oscar-nominated My Life as a Zucchini, while Rita Productions (Switzerland), Blue Spirit Productions & Gebeka Films (France) were recognized as producers of the year for their work on the stop-motion animated feature.
Other CARTOON MOVIE nominees included Michael Dudok de Wit (Netherlands) for the film The Red Turtle, which received Un Certain Regard Special Prize at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival and was also nominated for the European Film Awards, the César Awards and the Academy Awards, and Jean-François Laguionie (France) for Louise by the Shore, which received the top prize at the 2016 Ottawa Festival.
Denmark’s Angel Films -- the distributor in Scandinavian countries of My Life as a Zucchini, Phantom Boy, Ernest & Celestine, Pinocchio and Tad, The Lost Explorer -- received the award for distributor of the year, beating out fellow nominees MUBI (U.K), a global SVOD player available in more than 200 territories with properties including A Town Called Panic, Waltz with Bashir and The Three Robbers, and Long Way North and Cafard sales agent Urban Distribution International (France).
The full list of nominees for the 2017 CARTOON MOVIE Tribute Awards is shown below:
DIRECTOR OF THE YEAR
- Claude Barras for My Life as a Zucchini (Switzerland)
- Michael Dudok de Wit for The Red Turtle (The Netherlands)
- Jean-François Laguionie for Louise by the Shore (France)
DISTRIBUTOR OF THE YEAR
- Angel Films (Denmark)
- MUBI (U.K.)
- Urban Distribution International (UDI) (France)
PRODUCER OF THE YEAR
- Rita Productions (Switzerland), Blue Spirit Productions & Gebeka Films (France) for My Life as a Zucchini
- Knudsen & Streuber Medienmanufaktur, Ulysses Filmproduktion (Germany), Walking The Dog (Belgium), Melusine Productions (Luxembourg) & Den Siste Skilling (Norway) for Richard the Stork
- Lupus Films (U.K.) & Melusine Productions (Luxembourg) for Ethel & Ernest
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.
