Michel Hazanavicius’ Animated Holocaust Tale ‘The Most Precious of Cargoes’ to Open Annecy Film Festival

[+ Grogu]

The Most Precious of Cargoes, the first animated feature from Oscar-winning French director Michel Hazanavicius (The Artist), will open this year’s Annecy International Animation Film Festival.

The feature is a 2D animated adaptation of the best-selling book by French author Jean-Claude Grumberg. Set during World War II, it tells the story of a French Jewish family deported to Auschwitz. On the train to the death camp, in a desperate gesture, the father throws one of his baby twins out into the snow, where he’s discovered by a childless Polish couple living deep in the forest.

Hazanavicius presented the film as a work-in-progress at Annecy two years ago. French actor Jean-Louis Trintignant narrates the film with voice acting from Dominique Blanc, Denis Podalydès, and Grégory Gadebois. Oscar-winning composer Alexandre Desplat (The Shape of Water) composed the score. Animation is from 3.0 Studio – formerly Prima Linea — the group behind the Oscar-nominated The Red Turtle (2016). StudioCanal is handling worldwide sales of the film.

Annecy festival president Dominique Puthod, CEO Mickaël Marin, and artistic director Marcel Jean unveiled the full 2024 lineup at a press conference on Thursday. (See the full lineup below).

Among the features going up against The Most Precious of Cargoes in official competition this year are Ghost Cat Anzu from Japanese directors Yoko Kuno and Nobuhiro Yamashita, Sauvages ! from My Life as a Zucchini director Claude Barras, and Adam Elliot’s Memoir of a Snail.

Some of the highlights of Anncey’s Contrechamp (reverse-shot) sidebar are David Baute’s Black Butterflies from Spain, Brazilian animated feature Our Crazy Love from director Nelson Botter Jr., and the Pakistani film The Glassworker by director Usman Riaz.

Alongside the competition titles, some of the bigger animated blockbusters that will bow out of competition at Annecy this year include Paramount and Hasbro’s Transformers One, Sony’s The Garfield Movie, and Despicable Me 4, the latest in the hit franchise from Universal Pictures and Illumination Entertainment. Every single one of the Despicable Me and Minion films has screened at the French festival.

Annecy audiences will also get sneak peeks at such hotly anticipated features as DreamWorks Animation’s The Wild Robot, Pixar’s Inside Out 2, and upcoming Netflix animation films, including the new Wallace & Gromit feature and Zack Snyder’s Twilight of the Gods.

For the first time this year, the festival will screen a section of 12 new films in a new, non-competition section, “Annecy Presents,” highlighting movies “which are excellent but maybe too commercial or not designed to appeal to a jury,” explained Annecy artistic director Marcel Jean. A focus on films for younger audiences and a diversity of global productions informs the selection for the new sidebar. Garfield will screen in the Annecy Presents section, as will such features as Mascha Halberstad’s Fox and Hare Save the Forest and Behnoud Nekooei’s Extinction, a rare animated feature from Malaysia.

This year Annecy will honor Terry Gilliam with an Honorary Cristal award for his achievement in animation.

“Despite not having done much in animation — the opening credits for Monty Python, a few short films — Terry is hugely influential among animators,” said Jean, “his cut-paper technique and his spirit was very influential. Animators love [Gilliam’s 1988 comedy] The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, they love Brazil (1985).”

Adding to the quirkiness factor at this year’s Annecy will be Wes Anderson, who will attend the festival as a special guest and present a masterclass. The director won Annecy’s feature film Cristal and Audience awards in 2010 for his stop-motion film Fantastic Mr. Fox and took the jury award in 2022 for the “Aline” music video from The French Dispatch.

The 2024 Annecy Film Festival runs June 9-15. The Mifa animation film market runs alongside the festival June 11-14.

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