by Tessa Swehla, Associate Editor

This year will mark the eighth anniversary of Animation First, one of the biggest film festivals dedicated to animation in the US and certainly the biggest dedicated to French language animation filmmaking. Animation First is put on by L’Alliance New York, a non-profit dedicated to promoting French language and French language programming from all over the globe.

The festival this year runs from Tuesday, January 21, to Sunday, January 26, in L’Alliance New York’s beautiful Manhattan campus. This year, the festival presents seven feature-length films (including three US premieres) and five short film programs, as well as live panels on animation, virtual reality, and artists’ talks. There’s even live screenings of a multi-day competition for student animation filmmakers! 

As for me, here are the films and programs I am most excited about catching this year.

The Most Precious of Cargoes (La Plus Précieuse Des Marchandises)
Directed by Michel Hazanavicius
East Coast Premiere January 21
Tickets here

Director Hazanavicius is best known for his Academy Award winning film The Artist (2011), which I remember enjoying immensely. Nominated for several festival awards already, this film is his animation debut. The film is an adaptation of Jean-Claude Grumberg’s 2019 novel of the same name, which centers around a Jewish girl rescued by Polish woodcutters after being thrown from a train heading to Auschwitz as an infant. It feels like a remixed fairytale framing of a truly horrific event, so I’m curious what Hazanavicius’s take on the story will be. The director himself will be there for a Q&A after the screening.

Yuku and the Himalayan Flower (Yuku et la fleur de l’Himalaya)
Directed by Arnaud Demuynck and Rémi Durin
NY Premiere January 25
Tickets here

After years of successful collaboration on animated short films, Belgian director Arnaud Demuynck and French director Rémi Durin debut their first feature Yuku and the Himalayan Flower for very young audiences (recommended age is 3+). A young mouse named Yuku sets off in search of a magical Himalayan flower to heal her dying grandmother, carrying only her ukulele. A musical adventure with brightly colored animals? Yes, please.

The Twelve Tasks of Astérix (Les Douze travaux d’Astérix)
Directed by René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo
US Premiere of Restoration January 25
Tickets here

Animation First’s program this year balances premiering the new work and introducing US audiences to older works of French animation. The Twelve Tasks of Astérix is a restoration of the 1976 film based on the Astérix comics and the third in the animated series. Directed by the creators of the comics, the film was one of the first to use the xerography animation process instead of traditional hand inkers. The film is set around 50 BC: after many defeats at the hands of a magically enhanced Gaul village, Julius Caesar sets the village twelve challenges, inspired by the Twelve Labors of Hercules. The village assigns the tasks to warrior Astérix and his best friend Obelix. While I am not familiar with the source material or the series, both of which are wildly popular in France, I’m excited to watch what sounds like a wacky historical buddy comedy.

The Legends of Paris (L’Armée des Romantiques)
Directed by Amélie Harrault
US Premiere January 25
Ticket here

Animation First is showing the first episode of Amélie Harrault’s four-part mini series The Legends of Paris, which focuses on the lives of great Parisian artists–Victor Hugo, Hector Berlioz, Frédéric Chopin, Eugène Delacroix, Gustave Courbet, Charles Baudelaire, Honoré de Balzac, and Alexandre Dumas. I don’t know much about the structure of the show other than that the first episode is 52 minutes, but I am curious to see what kind of portrait of Paris in the 1800s Harrault and crew paint, as it is one of the most vibrant times for art in the city. A Q&A with Harrault and co-writer Céline Ronté will follow the screening.

Harmony (Harmonie)
Directed by Bertrand Dezoteux
NY Premiere January 25
Ticket here

It’s been a minute since I’ve seen a new space opera, even longer since I’ve seen an animated one (Fantastic Planet, maybe?), but that’s what Bertrand Dezoteux’s 3D animated, lo-fi Harmony promises. The film guides us through space explorer Jesus Perez’s adventures on a planet populated with posthuman creatures inspired by the art Hieronymus Bosch. A highly experimental filmmaker, Dezoteux created the film along with a companion art piece website Harmonie Center, where the landscape of the planet and its every shifting possibilities become interactive to the audience. The website gives a good preview of what the animation of the film looks like, so I’m preparing for some bizarre sci-fi images (my favorite!).

New Francophone Shorts Program 2
Screenings January 26
Tickets here

There are two blocks of animated short films in the running for the festival’s award of Best New Francophone Short: the first on January 22 and the second on January 26. While I don’t think that short films are merely a stepping stone on the way to feature films, I do appreciate that many new filmmakers start their careers making shorts, and Animation First created this award and these blocks to promote emerging French language art and artists. I am not familiar with the work of any of these filmmakers, but I wanted to give a special shout out to the second block as it seems to be thematically organized around the idea of change and transitions. Some of these transitions are deeply personal, such as a mermaid’s gender transition in GiGi (dir. Cynthia Calvi). Some are high-stakes, such as in the film Flatastic (dir. Alice Saey) about the changes in a manta-ray community after another one of their kind is killed by plastic waste. Some focus on how the outer life can change the inner one, such as a woman’s quest to personal growth through the art of tango in LOCA (dir. Véronique Paquette). Several have to do with water and ocean, including an adventure to the ocean floor in La Voix des Sirènes (dir. Gianluigi Toccafondo). These films seem to illustrate a current shift in filmmaking toward dialogues about change, our constant companion according to Octavia E. Butler, and I am delighted to learn more about what these artists have to say.

My Life as a Zucchini (Ma vie de Courgette)
Directed by Claude Barras
Screening January 26
Tickets here

I was unable to see the stop-motion Swiss film My Life as a Zucchini when it was released in 2016 or when it was nominated for Best Animated Feature Film for the 89th Academy Awards, so I am pleased that Animation First is giving me an opportunity to see it now on the big screen. Despite the brightly colored characters, the film’s premise seems initially grim–after his mother’s sudden death, Zucchini (or Courgette, in the French) is sent to live at an orphanage–but the film itself is billed as a comedy-drama, with the focus being on chosen family and finding your place in the world. This is my cue to bring tissues.

Marina Rosset: The Enchanting Power of Animation
Screening January 26
Tickets here

This block of twelve short films–ranging from one to twelve minutes in length–showcases the work of Swiss filmmaker Marina Rosset and some of her contemporaries. Because of the emphasis on Swiss animation for this year’s festival, this block seems like the perfect way to explore this particular tradition of animation over the past 20 years (the oldest film is from 2005). Many of these shorts are without dialogue or commentary, allowing the enchanting visuals to truly shine. The screening will conclude with an interview of Rosset on her work and the legacy of Swiss animation.

The Time Masters (Les Maîtres du temps), preceded by The Machine-Men (Les Hommes Machines)
Directed by René Laloux
Screening January 26
Tickets here

The final film of the festival, this restoration of 1982 film The Time Masters looks incredible. Directed by René Laloux, who wrote and directed the iconic French masterpiece of science fiction Fantastic Planet (1977), the film returns to space for the trials of Piel, a young orphan stranded on a desert planet infested with giant hornets, and the crew trying to rescue him, a couple of adventures and an exiled royal family. The US premier of the restoration of Laloux’s rarely seen short film The Machine-Men–a pilot for the French cult film Gandahar (1988)–will precede the screening of The Time Masters. Laloux’s animation and sci-fi status are legendary, so I encourage anyone who hasn’t yet experienced his work to take this chance to do so.

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