Like most of the major film festivals, Cannes has had an up-and-down history with its representation of animation. There have been some strong years for the medium, and one must never forget that “Shrek 2” competed for the Palme d’Or in 2004, but there have been other years where the animated offerings at the Croisette have been a touch scarce.
Recently though, Cannes has become a bit of an unexpected launch pad for animated movies hoping to translate prestige and positive reviews into Oscar glory. In 2024 “Flow,” a tiny independent Latvian feature in the Un Certain Regard section, was able to translate raves (including from IndieWire) into awards buzz that steadily built throughout the year into a surprising but delightful Best Animated Feature win at the Academy Awards. Last year, nothing much had a chance in the face of “KPOP Demon Hunters,” but two Cannes premieres — “Arco” and “Little Amélie or the Character of Rain” — were able to make it all the way to nominations.
This year’s Cannes, which begins May 12 and wraps on May 23, only has a handful of animated features to look forward to. But they represent a very wide and diverse breadth of the medium, and there are a few to keep an eye on both as award contenders and exciting oddities.
Probably the most likely to repeat the success of something like “Flow” or “Arco” is “Fallen,” a French animated feature by Louis Clichy, a Pixar alum who worked on movies like “WALL-E” and “Up” before making two animated “Asterix” features in his home country. Clichy’s third feature is 2D animated — with a sketchbook aesthetic (see above) that looks quite charming — and focuses on a young boy who needs an iron corset to stand upright and breaks away from his strict life on his family’s farm to find a passion for music. It seems like the type of sweet, uplifting story audiences would broadly like, and if reviews are good, it can probably ride that to some awards attention.
Two films will premiere at Cannes this May before competing in the main competition of the Annecy International Film Festival in June, a path that “Arco” and “Little Amélie” took last year. One Special Screening is “Tangles,” the debut feature of Canadian director Leah Nelson, which is based on a graphic memoir by Sarah Leavitt and focuses on a daughter who returns to her hometown to help care for her mother, who has begun suffering from Alzheimer’s. “Lucy Lost” from Oliver Clert is a more family-friendly story of a young orphan living in 1915 Sicily who goes on an adventure to uncover the truth behind her mysterious visions.
My most anticipated animated film at Cannes is also probably the least likely to get awards buzz, although the Oscar race would likely be much more interesting if it did. Playing as a Midnight screening, “Jim Queen and the Quest for Chloroqueer” is a retro, 2D animated independent film from debut directors Marco Nguyen and Nicolas Athané that sounds unabashedly camp and extremely queer, focusing on a hunky gay influencer and a twink who search for a cure to a disease that makes gay men heterosexual. It looks gorgeous, weird, daring, funny, and unlike any animated film to ever get serious awards attention, which is why I’m really pulling for it to be great.
Cannes isn’t just the main festival itself, as there are plenty of alternate and independent sections that run in the Croisette during the same two-week period. This year, Directors’ Fortnight will open with the French animated feature “In Waves” from director Phuong Mai Nguyen, about the romance between a surfer and skateboarder; it’s the first animated feature to open Fortnight, and will screen in both English and French language versions. The festival is also set to close with “Le vertige,” from French comedic director Quentin Dupieux, a movie about a man who discovers his world is a simulation that’s animated to look like a PS2 game. Other films in the selection include Japanese rotoscope film “We Are Aliens” and “Viva Carmen!”, an adaptation of the famous opera by “Chicken for Linda!” director Sébastien Laudenbach.
Will all these films be good? Probably not. There’s a chance that a few of them won’t find distribution in the U.S. at all. Still, that’s the excitement of a film festival: getting in on the ground floor of new, undiscovered movies and, when they’re good, being able to say you were there to see it first.
