The Annecy International Animation Film Festival, held from June 9-15 in Annecy, France, announced its winners this year. Totto-Chan: The Little Girl at the Window, an anime film by Shinei Animation, won the Paul Grimault Award for feature films.
This film is based on Tetsuko Kuroyanagi’s autobiographical memoir, detailing her unique experiences at Tomoe Gakuen during wartime Japan.
Originally published in 1981, Kuroyanagi’s book became a bestseller and was widely read by Japanese elementary school students in the 1980s.
Other notable winners at the festival included Adam Elliot’s Memoir of a Snail, which received the top Cristal for a Feature Film award.
Gintz Zilbalodis’ Flow, a co-production from Latvia, Belgium, and France, won multiple awards: the Jury Award, the Gan Foundation Award for Distribution, the Audience Award, and the Best Original Music Award for a Feature Film.
Competing anime in the feature film category included Ghost Cat Anzu, The Colors Within, and The Imaginary, but these did not win any awards.
In other categories, The Birth of Kitaro: The Mystery of Gegege competed in the Feature Films Contrechamp category but did not win, with Living Large taking the prize. In the TV Films category, both Pokemon Concierge and Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead were contenders but left without awards.
Akihito Izuhara’s Kawauso and Miserable Miracle competed in the Short Films category but did not win either.
Additionally, Masataka Kihara’s Yapolaponky and Lindong Chen’s Return competed in the Graduation Films category without success.
Koji Yamamura’s short My Inner Ear Quartet was part of the VR Works category, where Gargoyle Doyle won the Cristal for the Best VR Work.
Next year’s festival will honor Hungary as the country of focus, continuing Annecy’s tradition of celebrating global animation.
