'Flow' triumphs at Cartoon Movie animation festival in Bordeaux

Cartoon Movie, the annual pitching showcase festival for animated films brought 55 new projects from 16 countries this year. The 27th edition of the festival took place once again in Bordeaux from 4-6 March and is one of the key places where animation studios can find funding for their projects.

Unlike a traditional festival or fair, Cartoon Movie prioritises pitching in intense direct-to-financiers sessions for animation makers. Producers for all the 55 films selected are given slots – a maximum of 30 minutes – to sell their projects.

It might sound brutal, but the method has yielded success. Since its inception in 1999, Cartoon Movie has helped 487 films find backing with a total budget of €3.2 billion.

Of the films selected this year, the most were from French studios with 19 projects, followed by six German projects and five Norwegian ones. In total, the selected films have an overall budget of €316.9 million with each film on average requiring a budget of €5.7 million.

Honours even

Alongside the pitching, Cartoon Movie also hosts two sets of awards. The first is the Cartoon Movie Tributes. Here, the event celebrates the most outstanding achievements in animation across the past year.

Voted for by 838 industry experts from 40 countries, the Tributes give out three honours: Producer of the Year; Sales Agent of the Year; and Director of the Year.

Producer of the Year was jointly awarded to the three studios behind Oscar-winning animation film Flow. Latvia’s Dream Well Studio, France’s Sacrebleu Productions and Belgium’s Take Five all shared the award a week after Flow won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature.

During production, Flow’s development materials were shown at the 2022 edition of Cartoon Movie, the same year the French and Belgian studio joined the production. The film debuted at last year’s Cannes Film Festival and is the first Latvian film to win at the Academy Awards.

Kinology was selected as the Sales Agent of the Year. The Paris-based sales and co-production agency are behind the recent films Argonuts, Sirocco and the Kingdom of the Winds, as well as upcoming film Pets on a Train.

Director of the Year went to María Trénor. The Spanish screenwriter and director was behind the 2024 animated biopic Rock Bottom inspired by the life of Robert Wyatt. It’s her debut feature-length film having already won several international awards for her short-form animated films.

The other major award hosted by Cartoon Movie is the Eurimages Co-Production Development Award. Created by the Council of Europe, the Eurimages award is a €20,000 cash prize aimed at helping projects find co-production funding at an early stage.

This year’s Eurimages winner was Zako, a film by Armenian animator Tigran Arakelyan, co-founder of ONoff Studio. Like Flow, the Armenian studio is working in collaboration with French studio Sacrebleu Productions.

“We are glad to support a project that will allow audiences to discover a true story of an Armenian war victim and artist, bringing the light on a barely known aspect of European history,” the jury said of Zako. “This powerful and emotional journey will be supported by the creative use of new technologies. Beyond supporting a new talent, it also aims to reward the work of the producer committed to developing the animation industry in their society.”

Alongside being the nation behind Flow, animation’s biggest success story this year, Latvia was celebrated as Cartoon Movie’s spotlight nation.

Latvian animation was put under the limelight for the festival with a delegation of 16 producers and players travelling to Bordeaux. Hoping to follow in the pawprints of Flow, three Latvian films were put forward to the pitching panels: Born in the Jungle, Karmic Knot, and The Northern Star.

Three sneak peaks were also given at the festival for upcoming animated features: Finnish production Fleak; Czech production Tales from the Magic Garden; and French production The Songbirds’ Secret.