American landing at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival

It’s not the world before, but it looks like it furiously. In 2022, the Annecy Animation Film Festival regains very tangible international colors after two years of health crisis.

Deprived of a festival for two years, the Americans are coming back at a gallop. “We had to hold them back! Since 2019, the development of the platforms has taken place at breakneck speed, explains Marcel Jean, artistic delegate of the festival. Three years ago, we were just starting to talk about Apple TV+ or Disney+. Each group has since had a strategy for producing quality animated programs. » An overview of recent and future releases is essential to make an inventory of American creation.

We take the same and start again

Lack of inspiration or cinematographic commercialism? Both my captain, one would be tempted to answer in the face of the wave of sequels to successful films. The prize goes to Universal, which has accumulated three sequels in one year, with its two subsidiaries Illumination and DreamWorks.

The first, an American company whose studios are based in Paris, released at Christmas All on stage 2, more spectacular but less funny than its excellent first part, and is preparing, from July 6, to fill the rooms (which certainly need it) with little yellow and goofy creatures. Screened at the opening of the Annecy Festival, Minions 2 recounts the youth of Gru, the master of the saga Me, ugly and mean, of which a fourth part is planned for 2024! The first pictures of Puss in Boots 2hero of Perrault’s tales passed through the mill of DreamWorks in the saga Shrek, will also be shown during the festival. The talkative feline, disarming when he makes soft eyes, will undoubtedly use this subterfuge to convince of the usefulness of his return to the cinema on December 7…

self-celebration

It’s not new, but the trend is growing: Hollywood animated films like to stir up references to popular culture, no longer hesitating to feed on themselves. Will be unveiled in Annecy fifteen minutes of the highly anticipated Spiderman. Across the Spider-VerseSony production, sequel to the excellent new generation (2018), which paid a daring tribute to the original comic strip while multiplying the nods to mangas and cartoons.

Disney does nothing else, with Tick ​​and Tock. The Rangers of Risk, the movie, uploaded last month on its platform. In the manner of Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), whose cartoon characters were presented as very real actors, this rather cheerful film imagines the reunion of the duo of joking rodents, scrambled since the end of the broadcast of their series. For its part, Pixar, a subsidiary of the studio with big ears, will offer Annecy the first of Buzz Lightning (in theaters June 22), which imagines “the real story” of the space ranger who inspired the toy, heroes of the saga Toy Story

family affairs

The family is definitely in all its states at Disney. After the very successful Encantoa lively musical about parent-child relationships, then the audacious Red alerta Pixar production tackling puberty in girls in an allusive and humorous way, Mickey’s house continues with Strange World. The first images of this adventure film will be presented in Annecy in the company of a family of explorers, between IndianaJones and The Scrooge Bandwhich Disney chose to put online on its platform in France, at the end of the year, to the chagrin of operators who were counting on this windfall to bail out their coffers.

The great signatures

Showing an ogre appetite, Netflix will match Disney on the shores of the lake, where it will premiere The Sea Monster, a tale of naval adventures by Chris Williams, before its broadcast on July 8. True to its method, the streaming giant partners with great authors. After the deliciously nostalgic Apollo 10½by Richard Linklater, online since April, the platform will offer a taste of My Father’s Dragonan initiatory tale by the talented Irish director Nora Twomey, and the Pinocchio by Guillermo del Toro, proofreading in stop-motion (1) from the classic Italian tale.

→ VIDEO. Is the cartoon doomed to disappear?

American landing at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival