Ravinder Bhaker, CEO of India’s Central Board of Film Certification and Children’s Films Society of India, revealed at the Focus on India event held on Sep 3, 2022, that the Indian Government is in talks with Annecy International Film Festival to bring a localized version of the event to nation.

The development was revealed in response to the statement made by panelist Cristian Jezdic, VP Cartoon Italia and CEO of beQ entertainment, hoping for the country to have a strong animation film festival in the country.

Bhaker said that talks are ongoing and more updates will be provided in the future.

“Definitely, we have good news about this. Talks are ongoing with Annecy and we will announce it very soon.”

The Focus on India – Italy and India: Building a Common Audience, which was held at the Venice International Film Festival, was a combined effort between the DGCA (Directorate General for Cinema and Audiovisual) of MiC (Italy’s Ministry of Culture) focused on building a common audience for Italy and India.

The Annecy International Animation Film Festival was created in 1960 and takes place at the beginning of June in the town of Annecy, France. Initially occurring every two years, the festival became an annual event in 1998. It is one of the four international animated film festivals sponsored by the International Animated Film Association.

The festival is a competition between animated films of various techniques (traditional, cut-outs, claymation, 3DCG, etc.) classified in various categories:

• Feature films
• Short films
• Films produced for television and advertising
• Student films
• Films made for the internet (since 2002)
• Feature films contrechamp in competition (since 2007)

Masaaki Yuasa’s Inu-Oh, Yasuhiro Yoshiura’s Sing A Bit of Harmony and WIT Studio’s The Girl From The Other Side were screened at 2022’s Annecy Festival.

Source: Variety