Georgia partakes in leading French animation festival

Six Georgian cinema professionals are being represented at this year's leading French animation film festival, launching today in the south of France.

The Annecy International Animation Film Festival will run for six consecutive days at 15 venues in Annecy, a city of about 50,000 people in the country’s southeast.

Over two weeks the film festival will showcase more than 200 animation works from 83 countries in the form of short and feature-length films as well as television series. The works were selected from 2,600 initial submissions.

Along the 200-plus works in the official competition section, the festival will include 500 screenings of other works not in the competition. Within these other sections, guests will be able to see four projects by Georgian filmmakers.

A scene from the film 'The Pocket Man' by director Ana Chubinidze. Screenshot from the film’s trailer.

Young Georgian director Ana Chubinidze first presented her film The Pocket Man at last year's Annecy film festival. Her piece impressed representatives from French animation studio Folimage, who struck up a collaboration with Chubinidze.

Since then, the Georgian creator has been working to finalise the film along with her French partners and will present the finished work within the section Artist-in-Residence 2016.

In another part of the animation festival, the International Animation Film Market (MIFA) will bring together industry professionals for "animation industry's foremost showcase", organisers said.

The platform for co-production, financing and distribution will showcase Georgian filmmakers Tato Kotetishvili and Sandro Katamashvili with their respective projects Dog Days and A Crow.

See a review video for the 2015 Annecy International Animation Film Festival below:

The two works were selected to participate in the MIFA at the 2015 Nikozi International Animated Film Festival, held in Georgia last year.

Organisers of the Nikozi event collaborated with Annecy film festival staff on an initial plan to select one winning project out of 17 submissions to screen at this year's French event.

However the two projects by Kotetishvili and Katamashvili impressed the Georgian and French experts, so it was decided both would feature at the Annecy festival.

Mamuka Tkeshelashvili is the fourth Georgian filmmakers to present his short film Sunset at the fetival.

The three-minute piece about couples of different generations and their love relationships will screen among other short animations in the out-of- competition section.

Georgia will also have a representative on the French festival's jury.

Filmmaker Nana Janelidze was invited by the festival organisers to be one of three judges assessing television and commissioned films.

Rounding off the Georgian representation at the festival, artistic director Mariam Kandelaki will represent the Nikozi festival in a special section bringing together international organisers of animation film occasions.

Established in 1960, the Annecy International Animation Film Festival celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2010 before setting its record for countries represented last year.

The program for this year's festival can be viewed on the official website here.