As Anora walked away with the Cannes Film Festival’s top prize last year, a little-known movie from Latvia had quietly endeared itself to the audience, giving thumbs up to the aesthetic renaissance of animation. Flow, the animated feature film which premiered in Un Certain Regard category in Cannes, won the hearts weaving a tale of life and nature and harmony and optimism. It went on to win the Oscar for Best Animated Feature Film in March.
The phenomenal success of Flow, it seems, has assured an unusually high number of animated films at the 78th edition of the Cannes Film Festival. The ongoing festival has as many as four animated films in the official selection besides one title each in the Directors’ Fortnight and Critics’ Week parallel selection.
French films Amélie et la Métaphysique des Tubes, Marcel et Monsieur Pagnol and Arco are part of the Special Screenings section while Japanese film, Angel’s Egg (1985), completes the Cannes official selection. Another Japanese film Planètes (Dandelion’s Odyssey) is the closing film of Critics’ Week. Canadian film Death Does Not Exist is among the Directors’ Fortnight selection.
Based on an autobiographical book, Métaphysique des Tubes (2000), by Belgian writer Amélie Nothomb, who lived among other countries in Asia, particularly in Bangladesh, Amélie et la Métaphysique des Tubes tells the story of a Belgian girl born in Japan. Set in 2075, Arco is about a ten-year-old girl helping a mysterious boy in a rainbow suit who falls from the sky. Based on the life and works of 19th-century French writer and filmmaker Marcel Pagnol, A Magnificent Life recounts his memories of early cinema. Angel’s Egg, which is screened in the popular beach cinema section of the Cannes festival, is about a young girl caring for a large egg she discovers during a deluge.
Dandelion’s Odyssey portrays the incredible journey of four dandelions who discover a new planet after surviving destruction of the earth in nuclear explosions. Death Does Not Exist tells the story of an activist who revisits her convictions and choices after a failed armed attack by her group on wealthy landowners. The Cannes festival, which became a major international film festival to open with an animated movie (Disney’s Up) in 2009, comes ahead of next month’s Annecy International Animated Film Festival in France, considered the mecca of animation in global entertainment.
Faizal Khan is a freelancer