Despite the current coronavirus situation, Annecy International Animation Film Festival will be held online from 15 to 30 June, 2020. Four Czech short films and co-productions will be part of its official selection, already announced yesterday, and also will be viewable on the festival’s website.

Belgian-Czech Carrousel, directed by Jasmine Elsen, produced by Brecht Van Elslande from Animal Tank (BE) and co-produced by Peter Badač from BFILM.cz on the Czech side, will compete in Short Films Competition. Last year, Badač succeeded in Annecy with The Kite, this time the producer brings to the festival a short story of a woman who lives her routine, a small, very well organized system, a small microcosm which is disrupted by the arrival of newcomers. Carrousel was supported as a minority co-production by the Czech Film Fund in 2018 with CZK 500 000 (EUR 20 000).

Twelve minutes long Way of Sylvie by FAMU's Verica Pospíšilová Kordič has been selected for the Graduation Short Films Competition. The film focuses on a behavior of a woman named Sylvie, and on her ability of multitasking.

Truffles!, an episode of Hungry Bear Tales, a Czech-Irish TV series about two bear friends Ned and Mishka, is a part of this year's TV Films Competition. Hungry Bear Tales, directed by Kateřina Karhánková and Alexandra Májová, is a co-operation of Barbora Příkaská from Bionaut (CZ) with co-producers Czech Television (CZ), Treehouse Republic (IR), Kosmonaut (PL) and Raketa (SK). The project was supported by the Production Incentives Programme in the Czech Republic with the sum EUR 211 600 and with production support: EUR 800 000.

Last but not least, a video clip P/\ST: Distress, directed by Nora Štrbová and Alžběta Suchanová, has been selected for Commissioned Films in Competition. The clip thematizes an anxiety which is personified and constantly changing shape.

In 2019, Daughter, directed by Daria Kashcheeva, was honoured with 2 awards including one of the main prizes: Cristal for a Graduation Film. A historical success for Czech animation was completed by Martin Smatana’s The Kite which received Young Audience Award.

This year's edition will be also following the evolution of long-awaited Czech-French-Polish-Slovak feature Even Mice Belong in Heaven, directed by Denisa Grimmová, Jan Bubeníček and produced by Vladimír Lhoták / Fresh Films, Alexandre Charlet / Les Films du Cygne and co-produced by Animoon of Poland, and CinemArt SK of Slovakia. The film will be presented in a new format Preview, introduced by the festival this year.

Mifa

Two other projects, both directed by successful young author Martin Smatana, will represent Czech cinema at the industry programme Mifa Pitches. The first one is Smatana’s partly autobiographical film Hello, Summer! which shows a misery of a family on vacation by the sea. The short was supported by the Czech Film Fund for development with EUR 17 778 and it is produced by the director himself.

After the success of The Kite (world premiere at Berlinale’s Generation, 2019), producer Peter Badač (BFILM.cz) came with an idea of animated children´s series I Want to Know! which emulates The Kite both in terms of storytelling and visual style, and on which he works with the director Martin Smatana and two other experienced writers.