On Sunday, June 9, starts Annecy Animation Film Festival in France - Europe's most important international animation festival, which traditionally also hosts the ambitious film market MIFA (Marché international du film d'animation d'Annecy). This year, the main competition of the festival includes feature-length film "Flow" by Gints Zilbalodis. The Latvian Animation Association and representatives of several film studios with various upcoming projects will work at the film market.
The Annecy International Film Festival (this year from June 9 - 15) has been one of the world's most important animation forums for more than 60 years, this year more than 3400 films from all over the world have been submitted for the selection of the festival program, so the competition for entry into Annecy competitions is especially fierce. Director’s Gints Zilbalodis film Flow, which had its world premiere recently in May, at the Cannes Film Festival's Un certain regard section, has been selected for the main feature film competition at the Annecy Festival, which includes 12 films from Europe, Australia, Japan and China. The first screening of Flow is scheduled for June 10 at 6:30 p.m., followed by seven more screenings throughout the festival in various movie theaters.
In the Baltic context, it should be noted that in the Annecy competitions this year Estonia is represented by two short films from the Estonian Academy of Arts in the official competition Graduation Films and a minute-long work by the artist Sander Joon in the Commissioned Films competition, but Lithuanian films are not in any Annecy competitions this year. However, all three Baltic States are located next to each other in the MIFA D hall of the film market, the Latvian stand is organized by the Latvian Animation Association with the support of the National Film Centre of Latvia
The International Film Market MIFA of the Annecy Festival (June 11 - 14) regularly gathers more than 4000 accredited animation professionals, Latvia will be represented in MIFA by producers and directors from several film studios – Atom Art, Dream Well Studio and Trickster Pictures, Tritone Studio, Studija Kokles, Ego Media. Several of these studios are working on feature-length animated films – for example, upcoming films The Northern Star by Kārlis Vītols and Dog of God by Raitis Ābele and Lauris Ābele will be presented to distribution agents; studio Atom Art at the market will work with upcoming films in various formats – feature film Born Happy, short film Freeride In C and series Hello, Oscar! by Edmunds Jansons, as well – a short sand animation Kafka. In Love by Zane Oborenko.