A raft of animated features, documentaries and short films from Norway are set to screen both in and out of competition at this year’s Annecy International Animated Film Festival.
Rune Spaan’s ‘The Absence of Eddy Table’ to screen out of competition at Annecy 2017.
Several animated features, documentaries and shorts from Norway are set to screen at this year’s Annecy International Animated Film Festival, which will be held June 12-17 in Annecy, France.
A contender in the short film competition, Trollfilm production Mum’s Hair (Mammas hår) is one of several productions that promise a strong Norwegian showing. Norwegian director Maja Arnekleiv’s film follows a 16-year-old girl whose mother is diagnosed with cancer.
Screening out of competition, Rune Spaan’s The Absence of Eddy Table will also be shown. The 3D animated short, which asks viewers to consider what would happen if their worst fear and their greatest love turn out to be the same thing, is based on the works of cartoonist and designer Dave Cooper, who also wrote the script. It first hit the festival circuit in 2016, winning the Grand Prix at Fredrikstad and the award for Best Design at Ottawa, among other accolades.
Norwegian director Rasmus A. Sivertsen’s In the Forest of Huckybucky (Dyrene i Hakkebakkeskogen), closing in on 540,000 tickets sold in the Scandinavia market, is among the three Norwegian feature entries in the festival. Adapted from Norwegian author-artist-composer Thorbjørn Egner’s 1953 classic, In the Forest of Huckybucky follows the everyday life of Claus Climbermouse, Morten Wood Mouse, Mister Hare and all their friends in the woods, always on guard against predators. The film was written by Karsten Fullu and produced by Qvisten Animation.
Anne Magnusson-Pawel Debski’s The Man Who Knew 75 Languages (Mannen som kunne 75 språk), will also screen at Annecy 2017. The animated documentary from Embla Film portrays German Georg Sauerwein (1831–1904), who fought for linguistic minorities’ rights to speak their mother tongue. He became the teacher and friend of German Princess (and later Queen of Romania) Elisabeth of Wied.
Richard the Stork (Richard Storken), the German-Belgian-Luxembourgish and Norwegian co-production directed by Toby Genkel-Reza Memari and produced by Norway’s Kristine Knudsen, will also show. Raised by storks, Richard -- an orphaned sparrow -- is convinced he is a stork, too. When his adoptive family tells him the truth before migrating to Africa, a trip he is little-prepared for, he sets out on his own alongside an eccentric owl and a disco-singing parakeet.
Source: Norwegian Film Institute
