GSA Successes at the Annecy Festival

The FFF-funded VR production Emperor won a prize in Annecy, following on from Venice. But that was by no means the only success with GSA involvement.

Reynald Films' VR production, co-produced by Atlas V, France Télévision and Pico, in collaboration with the French studio Albyon and supported by FFF Bayern, won the Special Prize in the Festivals Connection VR Award category at the Annecy Festival. The production had already won prizes in Venice and at the Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival. In Cannes, Emperor was part of the Immersive Selection but screened out of competition.

From the perspective of the XR industry in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, Emperor was not the only success at the Annecy animation festival. The Cristal for Best VR Work went to Gargoyle Doyle, an American-Argentine-Austrian production in which Amilux Film of Vienna was involved.

Other successes were achieved in the linear competitions. Aliaksandr Yasinski, a Belarusian living in Prague, was awarded best composer for Joko. The 15-minute stop-motion film about toxic masculinity was handcrafted with clay figures in the Berlin studio of Polish director Izabela Plucińska.

Swiss production company Nadasdy Film had several strings in its bow and was delighted to take home the France TV Short Film Award for The Car That Came Back from the Sea and two prizes for The Drifting Guitar by Sophie Roze. The 30-minute animated film won both the Cristal for a TV Production and the Audience Award in the TV and Commissioned Films category.

Last but not least, Daniel Sterlin-Altman from the Film Universität Babelsberg Konrad Wolf also achieved a very special success. His work Carrotica received the Cristal for a graduation film, winning the Newcomer category.