French filmmaker and artist Michel Gondry has been introduced as a visitor of honor at this yr’s version of the Annecy Worldwide Animation Movie Pageant, operating from June 8 to 14, 2025.
Gondry will likely be introduced with an Honorary Cristal award, following within the footsteps of earlier honoraries akin to Terry Gilliam and Wes Anderson who had been equally feted on the 2024 version of the competition.
Will probably be the Everlasting Sunshine of the Spotless Thoughts director’s first go to to the French lakeside competition billed as the most important animation competition on this planet, though his work Is the Man Who Is Tall Completely happy?: An Animated Dialog with Noam Chomsky performed on the 2014 version, successful the Prix André-Martin for greatest French animated function.
Annecy pointed to Gondry’s work on music movies for artists akin to Björk, The White Stripes, Steriogram and Daft Punk as one other motivation for the distinction.
“Michel Gondry assumes the legacy of Georges Méliès as a lot as that of Norman McLaren. His boundless creativity and revolutionary method have introduced hand-crafted animation again into the mainstream, as brilliantly illustrated by The Science of Sleep,” mentioned Annecy’s Inventive Director Marcel Jean, referring to the director’s 2006 sci-fi comedy sparked by a bedtime story.
Gondry’s honor ties in with a beforehand introduced sidebar exploring the usage of animation in music movies. Different focuses will embody a tribute to Hungarian animation.
The 2025 version will comply with a record-breaking 2024 version attended by 17,400 accredited visitors, together with 6,500 animation professionals on the occasion’s MIFA market which celebrates its fortieth version this yr.
