Animation director Mariam Kapanadze will be featured in competition at the upcoming Annecy Festival, a recognised international event for animated cinema, after her work 'Abandoned Village' was selected for screenings in one of the festival's programmes.
In the Perspectives section for short films, the two-dimensional animated work produced last year will bring a look at a remote location disappearing under neglect and natural phenomena.
Organisers of the French festival picked 205 films for over 430 screenings in seven programmes designed to present some of the best creations in animation, after examining more than 2,700 submissions.
Official Short Form Selections Unveiled for Annecy 2021 Festival: 44 shorts, 47 graduate films, 26 TV films and 32 commissioned films will compete; the hybrid virtual/physical event is set for June 14-19, as festival organizers continue to weigh options… https://t.co/bvltspnPY6 pic.twitter.com/y25bYteaMU
— AWN (@ANIMATIONWorld) March 30, 2021
Of the selected films, 22 will be screened in the Perspectives section, with the festival expected to have its run between June 14-19.
Showing a day in a location based on a real settlement in upper Imereti province in Georgia's west, the 14-minute Abandoned Village features ambient sounds and no speech to convey the atmosphere of the setting.
Visual depictions in the film were made to closely resemble the real-world reference location, creating a story in which viewers "become an observer of the destruction of the village", the director has said.
Supported in its production by the Georgian National Film Centre in 2018, Abandoned Village was selected for the New Chitose Airport International Animation Festival in Japan in 2020.
The initial selection was followed by screenings this year at the Paris Animation Film Festival and the Tokyo Museum of Photography.