Georgian filmmaker Tato Kotetishvili wins French festival’s co-production prize

Young Georgian filmmaker Tato Kotetishvili has been granted a unique opportunity to develop his skills at a European multimedia studio after he was revealed as one of the winners of a leading French animation film festival last month.

Kotetishvili's animation work Dog Days, presented at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival that ran from June 13-18, won the festival's Ciclic Prize, presented by the French audio-visual fund Ciclic.

The prize, announced this week, means the Georgian director will spend a month at the French fund's studios to develop his project with Ciclic film experts.

Based in Chateau-Renault commune in central France, Ciclic works on developing and preserving multimedia art, book, image and digital culture by seeking cooperation, research and innovation with artists and creative institutions.

(picture) Kotetishvili presented his project 'Dog Days' at the festival's international co-production market. Photo from the Georgian National Film Centre.

The fund's award was granted to Kotetishvili after he presented Dog Days in the International Animation Film Market (MIFA) of the Annecy festival.

The setting of Dog Days is "a sad industrial town, where gravity no longer has an effect on humans so they must attach themselves to their animals with a leash in order to get around without floating away," read Annecy's overview of the film.

The piece was selected to feature at the MIFA, established by festival organisers as the "animation industry's foremost showcase" and featuring over 300 cinema producers and distributors seeking partnerships with creators.

The platform for co-production, financing and distribution also showcased a work by another Georgian director, Sandro Katamashvili.

The two filmmakers were among six Georgian cinema professionals to feature at this year's Annecy event.

Directors Ana Chubinidze and Mamuka Tkeshelashvili presented their respective works Pocket Man and Sunset at the event, while filmmaker Nana Janelidze was invited by festival organisers to be one of three judges assessing television and commissioned films.

The sixth member of Georgia's team at the Annecy festival, artistic director Mariam Kandelaki represented the Nikozi International Animated Film Festival in a special section bringing together international organisers of animation film occasions.

Over two weeks the Annecy film festival showcased more than 200 animation works from 83 countries in the form of short and feature-length films as well as television series.