French-German institution Arte was named top broadcaster at this year’s Cartoon Forum in Toulouse, offering a fitting end to an edition that exalted public broadcasters and intra-European cooperation. Attendees at Cartoon Forum’s 35th edition also paid tribute to Germany’s Zdf Studios and Ireland’s Cartoon Saloon, offering respective honors for Investor/Distributor and Producer of the year.

As voted by the near 1000 attendees of the animation confab, the peer-to-peer tributes offer a real-time gauge of industry currents, and here, even more so than last year, public outfits take pride of place. Alongside honors for Arte and Zdf, event organizers also offered a Cartoon Tribute of Honor Rai Kids executive director Luca Milano.

Founded in 1992, European cultural broadcaster Arte is now having a banner year in the digital space. After acquiring the Cartoon Forum-selected series “Samuel,” the cultural service has subsequently turned the short-form title into a non-linear smash,...

Academy Award–winning actor-turned-filmmaker Angelina Jolie is set to receive the TIFF Tribute Award in Impact Media at this year’s Toronto Film Festival, TIFF CEO Cameron Bailey announced on Tuesday.

Jolie will receive the award at the 2024 TIFF Tribute Awards, taking place at Fairmont Royal York Hotel on Sunday, September 8, while in town for the world premiere of her latest directorial effort, Without Blood, a war drama based on the book of the same name by Alessandro Baricco, which stars Salma Hayek and Demián Bechir.

Previously bestowed upon the likes of Pedro Almodóvar, Mira Nair, and Alanis Obomsawin, the TIFF Tribute Award in Impact Media is presented by Anne-Marie Canning and recognizes leadership in creating a union between social impact and cinema. Other honorees set for the TIFF fundraising gala, for which Sandra Oh is serving as the inaugural Honorary Chair, include Amy Adams, Cate Blanchett, Durga Chew-Bose, David Cronenberg,...

The great Japanese animator and co-founder of Studio Ghibli, whose 1988 masterpiece My Neighbour Totoro is back in UK and Irish cinemas, embraces the universe yet never shies away from life’s grittier elements

Is Japanese film-maker Hayao Miyazaki “the greatest family entertainer of our time”? That was the conclusion I reached about the writer-director behind such animated wonders as Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989), Spirited Away (2001) and Howl’s Moving Castle (2004) when reviewing Miyazaki’s 2008 charmer Ponyo in this paper. A few years later, while compiling a list of the 25 best films for children – a list that ranged from Chaplin’s 1921 classic The Kid to Nora Twomey’s 2017 beauty The Breadwinner – I wrote that “it’s hard to decide which of Hayao Miyazaki’s matchless animations to include in this list”.

Born in Tokyo in 1941, Miyazaki joined Toei Animation in 1963 and co-founded Studio Ghibli in 1985, creating a stream of world-beating animations, any one...

Record Intake

The European Film Academy has added a record 709 new members in its 2024 annual intake. New members include Cate Blanchett (Australia/U.K.), Jovan Marjanović (Bosnia and Herzegovina), Maria Bakalova (Bulgaria), Juraj Lerotić (Croatia), Anna Hints (Estonia), Ariane Toscan du Plantier (France), Stéphan Castang (France), David Thion (France), Marie-Ange Luciani (France), Latifa Saïd (France), Rebecca Houzel (France), Thomas Hakim (France), Sami Mustafa (France/Kosovo), Mohamed Siam (France), Hanna Bergholm (Finland), Hamze Bytyçi (Germany) and Christian M. Goldbeck (Germany).

The intake also includes Behrooz Karamizade (Germany), Jerry Hoffmann (Germany), Aylin Tezel (Germany), Jasmin Tabatabai (Germany), Sofia Exarchou (Greece), Phedon Papamichael (Greece), Kate McCullough (Ireland), Matteo Garrone (Italy), Enzo d’Alò (Italy), Francesco Montagner (Italy), Uljana Kim (Lithuania), Cindy Jansen (Netherlands), Fatih Rağbet (Netherlands), Cristi Puiu (Romania), Anca Puiu (Romania), Elene Naveriani (Switzerland), Selahattin Paşalı (Turkey), Molly Manning Walker (U.K.), Melanie Hoyes (U.K.), Lizzie Francke (U.K.), Charles Newland (UK), Jad Salfiti (U.

When Adam Changes, a Canadian animated film about an awkward teenager in suburban Quebec, won the Grand Prix at the Niigata International Animation Film Festival (Niaff).

The festival, now in its second year, ran from March 15-20 in Niigata, a port city two hours north of Tokyo.

Written and directed by Joël Vaudreuil, When Adam Changes premiered at last year’s Annecy International Animation Film Festival. “Coming here and meeting so many people, and being able to meet and talk with the other competition directors was a gift in itself,” said Vaudreuil, acceping the award at Niaff’s closing ceremony.

The omission of “My Father’s Dragon” from the 2023 Oscar nominations list for best animated feature sparked murmurings of disapproval from within the industry. The Netflix film — directed by Nora Twomey and a gorgeously hand-drawn adaptation of Ruth Stiles Gannett’s beloved children’s fantasy novel — had been lapped up by critics, many of whom assumed it would easily make the cut.

But the disquiet only served to showcase the astonishing track record of “My Father’s Dragon’s” Irish animation studio Cartoon Saloon, which had earned an incredible four Oscar nominations from its first four features, starting with “The Secret of Kells” in 2009 and followed by “Song of the Sea,” “The Breadwinner” and “Wolfwalkers.”

For Tomm Moore, the lack of a nomination for “My Father’s Dragon” also highlighted just how far animation had come since he co-founded Cartoon Saloon in Kilkenny alongside Twomey and Paul Young back in 1999.

“It showed...

“Chicken for Linda!” (GKids), the French/Italian 2D comedy from the husband-and-wife animation team of Sébastien Laudenbach and Chiara Malta, won the Grand Jury Prize at the sixth annual Animation Is Film Festival. “Robot Dreams” (Neon), the bittersweet Spanish/French hand-drawn dramedy from Pablo Berger, earned the Special Jury Prize.

For the Shorts section, Tal Kantor’s “Letter to a Pig,” a mixed media short about a Holocaust survivor who writes a thank-you letter to a pig that saved his life, won the Grand Prize, and the Special Jury Prize went to “Wild Summon” (from Saul Freed and Karni Arieli), which follows the dramatic life cycle of the wild salmon in human form.

The Aif win for “Chicken for Linda!” comes on the heels of taking the Annecy Cristal top prize. The film combines an imaginative hand-drawn style (color-coded characters with watercolor backgrounds) with a wacky premise concerning a frustrated...

The trailer marking the sixth edition of the Animation Is Film Festival in Hollywood (October 18-22) dropped Monday morning, highlighting the opening night premiere of Hayao Miyazaki’s acclaimed “The Boy and the Heron” (Studio Ghibli/GKids) at the Tcl Chinese Theater IMAX. This marks an IMAX first for the festival, produced by GKids in partnership with the Annecy International Animation Festival.

Aardman/Netflix’s “Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget,” the long-awaited sequel to the most successful stop-motion feature in history, will close Aif, followed by a Q&a with director Sam Fell and executive producer Peter Lord.

Aif programming from the previous two years boasted nine of the eventual animated feature Oscar nominees. This season they’ve scheduled several Oscar contenders: “The Boy and the Heron,” “Dawn of the Nugget,” DreamWorks’ “Trolls Band Together” (special screening), and Neon’s Annecy award-winning “Robot Dreams” (in feature competition). Plus, early...

“Star Wars: Visions” takes fans of a galaxy far, far away to truly uncharted areas.

The series of animated shorts, the second volume of which just came out on Disney+, lets animation studios from around the world interpret the beloved property in a way that is true to the studio and their culture. And the very best of Volume 2 is undoubtedly “Screecher’s Reach,” which hails from Irish studio Cartoon Saloon. It follows a group of orphans on a backwater planet being cruelly governed by the Empire. One night, they decide to sneak out but one has a terrifying secret – that she will face a wraith in a cave called Screecher’s Reach and will end up changing her life forever.

TheWrap spoke to director Paul Young on how the studio collided with Lucasfilm and what it was like working with living legend Anjelica Huston, who voices a mysterious figure...

Studios shouldn’t rely just on IP-based content to make artistically bold choices, said director Jeff Rowe at Annecy.

“Right now, things like ‘Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse Sperverse’ are this Trojan horse – they are taking a well-known IP and using that to break artistic boundaries and move the medium forward. My hope is that the studios will take these kinds of risks also with original ideas.”

Rowe, now behind “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem,” spoke out at Variety’s “Breaking the Borders of Animation” panel, moderated by its chief film critic Peter Debruge.

“There are some borders being broken right there,” quipped Debruge, mentioning his well-received film.

As noted by Rowe, the pandemic got rid of some traditional barriers in animation, with artists from all over the world able to work on big productions from home.

“On ‘Ninja Turtles,’ we had one artist working in South Korea, another in Thailand,...

It’s time to finally “humanize” the workplace, argued Oscar-nominated director Nora Twomey at Annecy. And women are leading the way.

“There was a point when I wanted to prove myself and would spend long hours immersed in animation. It took me until I had kids to start working smarter,” she said.

“Then I got sick in the middle of making ‘The Breadwinner’ and that also made me think about working in a way that could empower people around me. Now, I really don’t give a fuck anymore,” she added to thunderous applause.

During her “fireside chat” with Ramsey Naito at the Women in Animation (Wia) World Summit, Twomey – co-founder and creative director at Ireland’s Cartoon Saloon – also underlined the importance of representation.

“If you don’t see someone [like you] doing the job you would like to do in five years, you don’t think it’s open to you.

Variety will host a panel at the Annecy Animation Festival, Breaking the Borders of Animation, focusing on one of the key – and most exciting – talking points in the medium: How animation is currently being revolutionized and reimagined by new waves of creativity and technology.

The panel has been organised with Nickelodeon as its official partner.

On Tuesday June13, Variety’s chief film critic Peter Debruge will encourage his guests to wonder about the future of the art form, starting with Latifa Ouaou, EVP of Paramount and Nickelodeon Animation, who also executive produced “The Grinch” and “Minions: The Rise of Gru.”

“Breaking the boundaries of animation is such a great topic to speak about because it’s a very exciting time in animation,” she notes.

“[‘Spider-Man: Across the] Spider-Verse’ was the beginning of a new wave in animation. It gave us the freedom to move away from conventional realism and into bold and abstract expressions of realities.

The Irish animation industry has become increasingly robust over the last 10 years, despite the pandemic and other challenges thrown at the entertainment business. It reflects an overall passion in the country for animation and storytelling as well as a commitment by the Irish government to support the business through economic incentives.

Much of those incentives have come through Enterprise Ireland. Established in 1998 by the Industrial Development Act, Enterprise Ireland is a state-sponsored economic development agency that works with Irish businesses to help them grow and develop. It’s been instrumental in working with the Irish animation industry, helping shops grow through a series of loans, grants and other initiatives.

This has made it possible for studios like Kilkenny-based Cartoon Saloon, which has made some of the most notable 2D animated films recently released such as “The Secret of Kells” and “Wolfwalkers,” to create the kind of hand-crafted animation used to...

This year’s Annecy International Animation Film Festival looks to break records with a wider international reach and greater studio participation than ever before. Already set to overtake last year’s attendance, the French lakeside fest, runs June 11-17 and had run up 13,300 guests by late May — among them a U.S. delegation more than 700 strong.

“[This year marks] the most important U.S. presence ever at Annecy,” says artistic director Marcel Jean. “We’re taking in historical players such as Disney, DreamWorks and Pixar who will still come, as well as global platforms such as Netflix, Paramount, and Warner Bros. Discovery. And [we’re welcoming] a number of big titles.”

Disney, celebrating its 100th anniversary over the course of the year, plans a special screening of “Fantasia 2000” before offering Annecy’s famously boisterous and youthful crowd a first look at the upcoming animated musical “Wish.” Meanwhile, Warner Bros. Discovery will present behind-the- scenes peeks...

When Lucasfilm first approached acclaimed 2D Irish animation studio Cartoon Saloon to be part of the global expansion for “Volume 2” of the Emmy-nominated “Star Wars: Visions” anthology (currently streaming on Disney+), little did they realize that CEO and co-founder Paul Young was already thinking about directing his first film — and sci-fi at that.

All Young needed was a little encouragement from his Cartoon Saloon co-founders and Oscar-nominated directors Tomm Moore and Nora Twomey (“The Breadwinner”) to say yes. The result is the 13-minute “Screecher’s Reach.” A comfortable fit for Cartoon Saloon, the short draws on its familiar folktale sensibility and hand-drawn prowess with a surprisingly dark and subversive twist.

It’s about a young girl named Daal (Eva Whitaker) who seeks adventure beyond the bleakness of her rural workhouse existence by exploring the titular haunted cave with her friends, where she encounters the legendary shrieking ghost. The frightening, hallucinatory...

The film is based on the TV series Puffin Rock and follows the familiar birds trying to find the last egg of the season

London-based WestEnd Films has boarded animated film Puffin Rock And The New Friends from Irish animation studio Cartoon Saloon and Northern Ireland’s Dog Ears.

WestEnd will launch sales at EFM and has revealed the first image.

Currently in post-production, the film is based on the TV series Puffin Rock and follows the familiar birds trying to find the last egg of the season after it disappears under mysterious circumstances.

Puffin Rock And The New Friends...

Chris O’Dowd (My Father’s Dragon) and Amy Huberman (A Cat Called Jam) have signed on to lead the voice cast of Puffin Rock and the New Friends, a new animated feature from WestEnd Films in collaboration with Irish animation studio Cartoon Saloon and Northern Ireland’s Dog Ears.

The pic is currently in post-production, and WestEnd will launch sales at EFM where it will be showing buyers footage of the film.

Based on the Irish TV series Puffin Rock, the feature is directed by Jeremy Purcell, whose credits include the animated TV series Joe and Jack as well as the original Puffin Rock series and the animated features Song of the Sea and The Secret of Kells.

The voice cast is rounded out by Beth McCafferty and Eva Whittaker (Wolfwalkers).

Puffin Rock And The New Friends will follow favorites from the animated series, including Oona, Baba, May, and Mossy, who...

The Netflix feature “My Father’s Dragon” is the latest release from Cartoon Saloon, the Irish studio whose traditional, hand-drawn animation has a positively magical effect on its audience. In the case of “My Father’s Dragon,” it had that effect on the people responsible for the film’s score as well.

“The thing about animation is it’s a fantastical, completely created world, so that really takes the guardrails off the music if you’re willing to go there and your director is willing to go there,” “My Father’s Dragon” composer Jeff Danna told IndieWire. His brother and co-composer Mychael Danna added, “Audiences are very sophisticated listeners, especially in live-action films. Everyone has a kind of line in their head where they feel manipulated by the musical score — in our era the line for live-action drama is very different from the line for animation, and I think in this kind of hand-drawn,...

Netflix has scored 50 Annie Award nominations across series and features, including bids for “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio,” which leads in individual nominations with nine.

“Pinocchio,” which has picked up 38 awards so far this season, including the Golden Globe for animated feature, is one of three Netflix projects up for best feature, along with “The Sea Beast” and “Wendell & Wild.” Netflix has one contender in the indie feature field: “My Father’s Dragon,” with Cartoon Saloon.

Other films nominated for best feature are Disney-Pixar’s “Turning Red” and DreamWorks Animation’s “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish.” Rounding out the indie feature category are “Charlotte,” from January Films, Balthlazar Productions and Walking the Dog; “Inu-Oh,” from Science Saru; “Little Nicholas, Happy as Can Be,” from On Classics (Mediawan) and Bidibul Productions; and “Marcel the Shell With Shoes On,” from Marcel the Movie, LLC.

Del Toro, with co-director Mark Gustafson, is...

Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio (Netflix)

The proportions of his eponymous stop-motion character are gangly and childlike, in the words of Guillermo del Toro. “They lend themselves to these sort of haphazard rhythms of walking and running that are very endearing. In his apparent simplicity, is a very complex work of design keeping those few elements alive and on top with the raw wood that is simulating hair and branches, and the nails on his back are very expressive and unique and feel almost elemental.” Director Mark Gustafson points out that in the story, he’s carved by a drunken Geppetto making Pinocchio “very primitive in some ways, unfinished, naked, and exposed. That was what we needed for him to go out into the world with. He can’t hide anything. That’s the nature of innocence. You’re wearing it all on the outside and that’s what this character does.

These are curious days for feature animation. Netflix scaled back its plans in the arena, while two years of releases straight to Disney+ during Covid and under Bob Chapek seem to have seriously devalued the once unstoppable Disney/Pixar animation empire. Universal, though, enjoyed one of the biggest hits ever with the near 1 billion juggernaut “Minions: The Rise of Gru” and also landed the year’s second-biggest animated release with “The Bad Guys.”

Still, animation at the box office and animation in the awards race are two very different things, and it’s unlikely that Academy voters will be checking the grosses as they review the 27 qualifying films in this year’s Best Animated Feature race at the Oscars.

Those 27 include movies from big, traditional studios like Disney/Pixar, Universal’s DreamWorks Animation, Warner Bros. and 20th Century (now part of Disney) – but also a handful of international productions from GKids,...

Disney swept the animation category with three nominations last Oscar season, culminating in a win for Encanto. This year, Netflix is coming on strong with more than a few contenders, including Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio. DreamWorks Animation is back with a few contenders of its own, while Apple, A24 and Gkids are seeking their first Oscar win for Best Animated Feature. With only five nominations available, who will go on to compete for the prize?

Walt Disney Studios has a few contenders this year, but their frontrunner is Pixar’s Turning Red. Director Domee Shi revisited her own awkward teen years to create a story of a young girl struggling to please her family as she enters adolescence. Turning Red follows Meilin Lee (Rosalie Chiang), a 13-year-old Chinese Canadian girl from Toronto who works at her family’s temple to make her mother, Ming (Sandra Oh), proud. Due to a family blessing/curse,...

As calls for diversity and gender parity in entertainment are reshaping the industry, animation continues to promote and represent women in game-changing roles, for executives and creative leaders.

Jennifer Lee leads Walt Disney Animation Studios. Kristine Belson runs Sony Animation. Karen Toliver heads Netflix’s toon arm. Ramsey Naito oversees Nickelodeon. Margie Cohn tops DreamWorks. And of course there are a many more.

“I think it was initially maybe 10 or 15 years ago, it was an area where women could get into a leadership role, somewhere on the ladder of say series production as a production executive, or studio executive in a junior way,” says Meredith Roberts, executive vice president, TV animation, Disney branded television.

“Over time they’ve had success and they’ve climbed the ladder and become much higher caliber, top producers, a senior studio level people, and along the way, because they were afforded those opportunities, they’ve...

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“This year, it’s very telling that all the animated movies are concerned with death. And also fathers, sons, daughters, mothers. Really, two themes unifying all our movies,” Guillermo del Toro observed as he and his fellow animators gathered to talk shop in a virtual roundtable on Nov. 2. In the stop-motion Pinocchio, directors del Toro and Mark Gustafson reimagine the oft-told tale of the puppet who yearns to be a real boy in 1930s Fascist Italy, while Joel Crawford’s Puss in Boots: The Last Wish continues the adventures of another familiar character as he confronts his ninth and possibly final life. Henry Selick’s stop-motion Wendell & Wild revolves around an orphaned girl who teams up with two demons from the underworld; Nora Twomey’s My Father’s Dragon, based on the children’s novel, tells of a young boy who joins forces...

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As December approaches, Netflix is giving the well-reviewed Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio a high-profile debut.

Netflix Animation — despite its challenging year on the business side — has a strong and varied slate of animated feature contenders, the most notable being del Toro’s moving stop-motion retelling of Carlo Collodi’s Pinocchio, which is having a limited theatrical rollout ahead of its Dec. 9 streaming debut.

Netflix burst onto the animation scene in 2019, releasing its first original animated feature, the Christmas movie Klaus, directed by Sergio Pablos, as well as French film I Lost My Body, from Jérémy Clapin. Both movies earned Oscar nominations in 2020, and Netflix has had at least one category nomination each year since. It did win an animated short Oscar in 2021, for If Anything Happens I Love You, but the streaming service is still vying for its first animated feature category win.

Founded over 20 years ago, Irish animation studio Cartoon Saloon is an established force to be reckoned with. With multiple Oscar nominations and Annie Awards trophies to its name, the surprise is that it’s only made a handful of features. Its fifth arrives this week on Netflix and My Father’s Dragon brings with it their usual mix of fantasy, expressive animation and a large sprinkling of pure magic.

Related: See the red carpet interviews for this film from the 2022 London Film Festival

Based on the 1948 children’s novel of the same name by Ruth Stiles Gannett, it starts in the depression-hit 1930s with young Elmer (voiced by Jacob Tremblay) struggling to cope with a move to the city with his mother. He eventually runs away in search of Wild Island, where he’s told that a young dragon is waiting to be rescued and, as well as finding a dragon...

Struggling to cope after a move to the city with his mother, Elmer (Jacob Tremblay) runs away in search of Wild Island and a young dragon called Boris (Gaten Matarazzo) who waits to be rescued. Photo: Netflix Cartoon Saloon is undoubtedly one of the essential underdogs of modern animation studios,...

Indie distributor Utopia, currently in theaters with Holy Spider, anticipates music documentary Meet Me In The Bathroom will be its biggest weekend opening to date.

It’s holding onto numbers for Sunday from one-night premieres this past week in LA at the Fonda and in NY at Webster Hall with live performances by The Moldy Peaches, Adam Green, Wah Together and special guests Tim Heidecker and Jim Jarmusch. This weekend, the event film by Dylan Southern and Will Lovelace, co-produced by Vice, Xtr and Pulse Films, opens at the IFC Center and Los Feliz with multiple shows sold out. Films and presales speak “to the growing 2000s nostalgia, but also the iconic impact of the bands featured in the film and their continued artistry and output,” said marketing chief Kyle Greenberg.

This early 2000s NYC indie rock scene immersion acquired out of Sundance expands to 150 screens Nov. 8 for one-night engagements...

An unlikely voice cast, including Dianne Wiest, Leighton Meester and Alan Cumming, breathe life into an immersive adaptation of the 1948 book

There’s a simple, earnest charm to Irish director Nora Twomey’s transporting adaptation of 1948 kids book My Father’s Dragon, a welcome diversion from the poppy smugness that wears down so many animated films today. For all of Netflix’s many faults, the streamer’s versatility within the cartoon sphere has helped to elevate and distinguish them from studio rivals, where too often each new offering feels one and the same, tonally and visually. It’s allowed for smaller, less brash, films to peek through, each with its own unbranded personality and aesthetic and here’s a persuasive example of how that idiosyncrasy can work so very well.

It hails from Cartoon Saloon, the Kilkenny-based mini-studio that’s quietly insisted itself as a real industry force with Twomey’s...

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Guillermo del Toro received an enthusiastic standing ovation following the screening of his upcoming stop-motion adaptation of Pinocchio on Saturday at the close of the Animation is Film Festival.

In a packed Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills, del Toro was on hand for a conversation about the moviemaking with Oscar-winning VFX veteran Phil Tippett (Jurassic Park) following the screening. “It’s just a whole different way of creatively thinking, doing something like this,” said Tippett. “You get totally lost in the world-building.”

Of his approach to Pinocchio, del Toro said he viewed the animators as actors. “I promised, you are going to be the actors, this is what we want. But if the puppet tells you something different, do it. There is no other form of animation where the bond [between animator and character] is so close.”

He added that his hope that was “maybe 30 minutes into the movie,...

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Cartoon Saloon’s “My Father’s Dragon” (streaming on Netflix November 11), the whimsical 2D adaptation of Ruth Stiles Gannett’s classic children’s book, got some Oscar heat this week by winning the Special Jury prize at the Animation Is Film Festival. It’s quite a contrast to Irish director Nora Twomey’s Oscar-nominated directorial debut, “The Breadwinner,” based on Deborah Ellis’ popular YA novel about Afghan oppression.

But the mere suggestion that “My Father’s Dragon” is kid-friendlier registers a protest from the director. The tone might be gentler, but the themes of parenting and puberty are very complex, she insists.

“My Father’s Dragon” explores the rite of passage experienced by the restless Elmer (Jacob Tremblay), who runs away from his hard-working mother (Golshifteh Farahani) and their bleak existence in the noirish city of Nevergreen to the colorful but endangered Wild Island, where he bonds with a dragon...

Cartoon Saloon is very good at this. The Kilkenny-based studio behind “The Secret of Kells” and “Song of the Sea” has emerged as a powerhouse in recent years. Its evocatively rendered 2D films drawing on ancient Celtic imagery — and the traditional storytelling charm that comes with it — sets its work apart from so much of the craven slop that passes for family entertainment in the age of “Lightyear” and “The League of Super-Pets.” If cinema is a crumbling church, the films of Cartoon Saloon are its lovingly crafted stained glass windows.

That much was already made evident by 2020’s astonishing “Wolfwalkers”, but “My Father’s Dragon” might do even more to cement Cartoon Saloon’s role as a necessary counterbalance to the rest of your children’s movie diet. That isn’t because Nora Twomey’s lush — if extremely loose —adaptation of Ruth Stiles Gannett’s 1948 novel represents another creative...

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“Little Nicolas,” the nostalgic, hand-drawn ode to the popular French children’s book series and its creators — René Goscinny (“Asterix”) and the late illustrator Jean-Jacques Sempé — won the Grand Prize at the fifth annual Animation Is Film Festival (Aif), held last weekend at the Tcl Chinese 6 Theaters in Hollywood. This should help the France-Luxembourg release from directors Amandine Fredon and Benjamin Massoubre secure U.S. distribution.

“My Father’s Dragon” (Cartoon Saloon/Netflix), the 2D adaptation of Ruth Stiles Gannett’s classic children’s book, from Oscar-nominated director Nora Twomey (“The Breadwinner”), took home the Special Jury prize. This provides some heat as Cartoon Saloon chases its fifth Best Animated Feature Oscar nomination.

The Audience Award went to “Aurora’s Sunrise,” the animated documentary from director Inna Sahakyan, which tells the remarkable story of Aurora Mardiganian, who survived the Armenian genocide as a teenager, and came to America, where she...

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This article contains IndieWire’s preliminary Best Animated Features predictions for the 2023 Oscars. We regularly update our predictions throughout awards season, and republish previous versions (like this one) for readers to track how the Oscar race has changed. For the latest update on the frontrunners for the 95th Academy Awards, see our 2023 Oscars predictions hub.

Nominations voting is from January 12-17, 2023, with official Oscar nominations announced January 24, 2023. Final voting is March 2-7, 2023. And finally, the 95th Oscars telecast will be broadcast on Sunday, March 12 and air live on ABC at 8:00 p.m. Et/ 5:00 p.m. Pt. We update predictions through awards season, so keep checking IndieWire for all our 2023 Oscar picks.

At the midway point of 2022, here’s the current state of the animated feature Oscar race: Pixar’s “Turning Red” is the early frontrunner, the studio’s “Lightyear” is still a contender after underperforming at the box...

The Animation Is Film Festival, in its fifth in-person edition, once again champions the jewels of the hand-drawn, CGI and stop-motion world.

This year’s festival kicks off Oct. 21 at the Tcl Chinese 6 Theatres in Hollywood with the U.S. premiere of Henry Selick’s stop-motion “Wendell & Wild.” Selick will also be there to conduct a Q&a after the screening. The festival will close with Guillermo del Toro’s “Pinocchio,” with a Q&a with del Toro after the screening.

“To repurpose a line from Tolstoy, every special festival is special in its own way. Most obviously, when a bona fide master of the craft comes out with his first film in over a decade — as is the case with Henry Selick’s ‘Wendell & Wild’ — that’s special. When an Oscar-winning ‘live-action’ director comes out with his first animated feature, a passion project many years in the...

Like a department store that pulls out its winter holiday items weeks before All Hallows' Eve, Netflix isn't going to let a little thing like the calendar stop it from bombarding its subscribers with Christmas movies in November. That's not to say the streamer's exclusive yuletide rom-coms are all bad — quite the opposite, in fact (consider this your friendly reminder to finally watch "Single All the Way" this year).

Fortunately, if films like "Falling for Christmas" (aka the long-awaited Lindsay Lohan Netflix Christmas movie) aren't your bag, there are plenty of other options on the service to choose from that month. Perhaps you'd be more inclined to watch "Slumberland," Francis Lawrence's fantasy film adaptation of Winsor McCay's classic "Little Nemo in Slumberland" comic strips starring Jason Momoa as a shaggy-furred half-man, half-animal with mountain goat horns and an impeccably flamboyant fashion sense? You could also go for the...

After a 14-year uphill battle, Mexican auteur Guillermo del Toro was finally able to share his dream project with an audience as “Pinocchio” (officially titled “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio”) had its world premiere at the BFI London Film Festival.

Taking the stage before the premiere, del Toro spoke of his connection to the story: “I saw the film as a kid and it’s a film that bonded me with my mom for an entire life. It affected me because Pinocchio saw the world the way I saw it. I was a little bit enraged that people demand obedience from Pinocchio so I wanted to make a film about disobedience as a virtue, and to say that you shouldn’t change to be loved.”

The film’s young star, newcomer Gregory Mann, described the premiere – which coincides with his 13th birthday, a serendipitous fact that earned him a loving...

Children’s literature loves few things as much as a mighty monster who remains, against all outward appearances, defiantly benign — one who sets out to soothe young nightmares after initially stoking them, ultimately proving that fears and anxieties aren’t limited to little folk. Boris, the cheerfully dorky title character in Ruth Stiles Gannett’s 1948 book “My Father’s Dragon,” is cut from the same soft felt as Frank L. Baum’s Cowardly Lion, Roald Dahl’s Big Friendly Giant or Jill Murphy’s Worst Witch. A would-be flying fire-breather who hasn’t yet found his wings or his flames, he has even more growing up to do than fearful 10-year-old hero Elmer, and their mutual guilelessness sets the tone for Irish animator Nora Twomey’s winningly sweet-natured, visually transporting adaptation.

The overriding gentleness of “My Father’s Dragon” is a trademark virtue for Cartoon Saloon, the Ireland-based animation studio...

A beloved children’s novel is turned into a charming animation in My Father’s Dragon, which is world premiering at the BFI London Film Festival. Oscar-nominated director Nora Twomey (The Breadwinner) helms a story of childhood friendship based on the 1948 novel by Ruth Stiles Gannett, with animation from Cartoon Saloon and a screenplay by Meg LeFauve (Inside Out). It’s a sweet adventure with appeal for young kids and a starry voice cast including Jacob Tremblay as hero Elmer, and – in one of the film’s more amusing moments – Whoopi Goldberg as a cat.

In the opening scenes, a narrator (Mary Kay Place) introduces her father, Elmer, who had a magical experience some time ago. We meet Elmer when his mother (Golshifteh Farahani) is running a modest but successful retail business, involving her son in the day-to-day workings of the store.

Cartoon Saloon have been at the heart of some of the best animated films ever made, and today saw their latest – My Father’s Dragon premiere at the 2022 London Film Festival. The Netflix film stars Jacob Tremblay, Gaten Matarazzo, Golshifteh Farahani, is directed by Nora Twomey and comes from the studio of Cartoon Saloon.

My Father’s Dragon hits Netflix on the 11th of November, 2022. Colin Hart, Ethan Hart and Scott Davis were on the red carpet, here are their interviews.

My Father’s Dragon Lff Premiere Interviews

Plot:

Wild Island is home to numerous ferocious animals, including apes, crocodiles, rhinos and even a dragon. But this dragon is young, innocent and isn’t expected to breathe fire for at least a century. Across the sea, young Elmer lives in the big city. An act of kindness to a cat sees him rewarded with a trip to the island. But on his arrival,...

"My Father's Dragon" is a 2022 animated feature that feels like a classic. Between the charming hand-drawn aesthetic, the imaginative setting, and the myth-like narrative structure, it has that rare quality of being truly timeless; this is a film that could have come out forty years ago, and will feel as relevant generations from now as it does today.

And I worry that no-one else will like it.

Directed by Irish animator and director Nora Twomey ("The Breadwinner"), "My Father's Dragon" tells the story of a boy who finds himself on an unexpected adventure. When he and his mother lose their shop and fall on hard times, Elmer (Jacob Tremblay) runs away from home, vowing to raise the money to reopen the family business. Elmer has a knack for finding things and prides himself on being a fixer, which only makes it harder for him to accept that some problems in life don't have answers.

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Ruth Stiles Gannett’s 1948 Newbery Honor children’s fantasy novel, My Father’s Dragon, gets Cartoon Saloon treatment in Nora Twomey’s lovingly hand-crafted feature adaptation. Brought to life by a starry voice cast headed by Jacob Tremblay and Gaten Matarazzo as a 10-year-old boy named Elmer and Boris, the dragon with whom he discovers the rewards of friendship and bravery, respectively, the film takes its visual inspiration directly from the original illustrations by the author’s stepmother, Ruth Chrisman Gannett. It lacks the cultural specificity of the Irish animation boutique’s best work, like Wolfwalkers and Song of the Sea, but its retro 2D beauty and lively storytelling should please junior audiences.

World-premiering at the London Film Festival ahead of its Nov. 11 Netflix bow, this is the second feature based on Gannett’s beloved book, following Masami Hata’s 1997 Japanese version. It represents...

Updated: The Animation Is Film Festival has added a special presentation of Guillermo del Toro’s “Pinocchio” (Netflix) as the closing night selection. Del Toro will appear in person for an introduction and a Q&a. The world premiere of the English-language version of “One Piece Film Red,” Japan’s top box-office film of the year, will serve as the centerpiece.

Earlier: The fifth annual Animation Is Film (Aif) Festival has announced its 2022 lineup featuring the U.S. premiere of Academy Award winner Jordan Peele and BAFTA winner Henry Selick’s “Wendell & Wild.”

The Aif fest opens with “Wendell & Wild” on October 21, running through October 23 and closing with a special surprise screening on October 29. Programming highlights also include “My Father’s Dragon” from Oscar-nominated Nora Twomey and Annecy Cristal winner “Little Nicolas.”

“I’m delighted my new film ‘Wendell & Wild,’ co-written and produced with Jordan Peele, will have its U.

A total of 164 feature films will play at this year’s London Film Festival, alongside an abundance of shorts, TV series and an expanded program of Xr (extended reality) works — and that’s in a comparatively slimmed-down era of curation for a public-facing festival that has long aimed to bring the best of the global festival circuit to non-traveling cinephiles.

What has definitely grown is the Lff’s national reach: In what fest director Tricia Tuttle terms the festival’s “new normal” format after a few years of structural shifts and Covid-era adjustments, the capital-centered event will also be hosting screenings in 10 other cities around the U.K., from Manchester to Edinburgh to Belfast — sealing its status as the country’s preeminent film festival. A digital program of up to 20 titles will also be made available for online viewing, while short films and screen talks will be free to stream...

Netflix has debuted the trailer for the upcoming animation ‘My Father’s Dragon’ which premiere’s at the BFI London Film Festival on October 8th.

From five-time Academy Award®-nominated animation studio Cartoon Saloon and Academy Award®-nominated director Nora Twomey (The Breadwinner), comes an exquisite film inspired by the Newbery-honored children’s book from author Ruth Stiles Gannett. Struggling to cope after a move to the city with his mother, Elmer runs away in search of Wild Island and a young dragon who waits to be rescued. Elmer’s adventures introduce him to ferocious beasts, a mysterious island and the friendship of a lifetime.

The film features the vocal talent of Jacob Tremblay, Gaten Matarazzo, Golshifteh Farahani, Dianne Wiest, Rita Moreno, Chris O’Dowd, Judy Greer, Alan Cumming, Yara Shahidi, Jackie Earle Haley, Mary Kay Place, Leighton Meester, Spence Moore II, Adam Brody, Charlyne Yi, Maggie Lincoln, Jack Smith, Whoopi Goldberg,...

Cartoon Saloon is one of the best animation studios working today. The Irish studio has continuously given us gorgeously-drawn tales that combine fantasy with reality, unafraid to hit some hard truths about life, particularly the sins of the past, while still delivering fun and exciting adventures for the whole family. From their Irish Folklore Trilogy and its exploration of mythology and history, culminating in the spectacular masterpiece that is "Wolfwalkers," to the more dramatic but still impactful Angelina Jolie-produced "The Breadwinner," the studio has a unique visual style and a penchant for using the medium of animation to tell stories that kids can watch without shying away from the hardships of the world.

The latest Cartoon Saloon film is "My Father's Dragon," inspired by the children's book of the same name by author Ruth Stiles Gannett. Studio co-founder Nora Twomey, who directed "The Secret of Kells" and "The Breadwinner,...

In a world where major animation releases start to look very similar with their Pixar-esque visuals, projects like “My Father’s Dragon” really do stand out.

Read More: ‘Maya And The Wave’ Review: An Uplifting Sports Doc About Maya Gabeira’s Quest To Surf One Of The World’s Biggest Waves

As seen in the trailer for “My Father’s Dragon,” the Netflix animated feature has stunning visuals and a unique style as it tells the story of a young boy and the dragon he befriends.

Continue reading ‘My Father’s Dragon’ Trailer: The New Animated Film From Oscar-Nominated Director Nora Twomey Arrives In November at The Playlist.

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My Father’s Dragon, the next movie from Wolfwalkers animation studio Cartoon Saloon, and Little Nicolas, which last spring won the top prize at Annecy, are among the films named to the competition lineup of the Animation Is Film Festival, which kicks off Oct. 21 in Hollywood.

Little Nicolas, helmed by Amandine Fredon and Benjamin Massoubre, is an animated adaptation of the children’s series by Rene Goscinny and Jean-Jacques Sempe. My Father’s Dragon, helmed by Oscar nominee Nora Twomey (The Breadwinner), is based on Ruth Stiles Gannett’s children’s book of the same name and will be released this fall on Netflix.

The competition lineup also includes Gold Kingdom and Water Kingdom, directed by Kotono Watanabe; Titina, directed by Kajsa Næss; Aurora’s Sunrise, directed by Inna Shaken; Oink, directed by Mascha Halberstad; Perlimps, directed by Alê Abreu; and Unicorn Wars,...

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Netflix Animation laid off 30 employees on Wednesday, the streaming service confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter. It is it the latest in a series of cutbacks and restructuring that began last spring after Netflix reported that it had lost 200,000 subscribers during the first quarter of 2022, followed by a loss of 970,000 subscribers during the second quarter.

During this period, which had already included 70-plus layoffs in animation and numerous cancelled projects including Meghan Markle’s Pearl, Netflix Animation began restructuring that saw new leaders take over in the past few months. The studio is now led by vp of animation film content Karen Toliver and vp animation film production Traci Balthazor. It is understood that Tuesday’s layoffs reflect Netflix’s intent to reorganize animation film production under Balthazor.

Simultaneously, Netflix Animation is in the process of opening a new Burbank facility to house its original feature animation projects.

Netflix is laying off 30 staffers from its film animation team in the wake of a restructuring to its leadership for that department.

The team, led by Karen Toliver (VP Animation Film Content) and Traci Balthazor (VP Animation Film Production), aims for better collaboration closer to traditional animation film studios, resulting in 30 different roles that are no longer needed, an individual with knowledge of the decision said.

The move is not expected to lead to a downturn in the overall amount of content that Netflix puts out from its film animation unit.

Netflix had no comment.

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Back in July, Toliver was promoted to lead the film animation team and report directly to global film head Scott Stuber. It led to Melissa Cobb and Gregg Taylor shifting to becoming creative producing partners and removing layers from the leadership structure, while...