The six-project showcase, spanning three features and three series, connects filmmakers recognized at Annecy, Berlinale, Venice, SXSW, and Cannes with production companies adept at bringing auteur-driven animation into international distribution. Ranging from historical fantasy and mountain folklore to sci-fi adventure, mystery, and preschool comedy, the selection demonstrates how short-form voices are succeeding in scaling up without losing their artistic identity.

Between history and myth

Following Even Mice Belong in Heaven, widely billed as the best selling animated feature made in the Czech Republic in the last decades, directing duo Denisa Grimmová and Jan Bubeníček return to Annecy with another ambitious project. Their new feature, Timelessness, once again combines puppet stop-motion with 3D CGI, building on the visual and production expertise that made their previous work a standout contribution to European animation. The story follows two 13-year-olds, David and Berta, who enter an in-between realm where myths, legends, and restless souls mingle across time. What starts as a holiday adventure turns into a quest to uncover a hidden family secret that binds them together. Produced on the Czech side by Vladimír Lhoták of Hausboot, with France’s Les Films du Cygne, Poland’s Animoon and Norway’s Mikrofilm attached as coproducer, the project has already been presented at Cartoon Movie 2025 and backed by the Czech Audiovisual Fund and Creative Europe MEDIA. Timelessness arrives in Annecy as one of the higher-profile Czech animation projects in development, carrying with it the weight of a proven team and correspondingly high expectations as the producer now seeks French distributors, sales agents, and platforms.

If Timelessness represents the more established end of the Czech animated feature pipeline, Inhalatorium signals a newer auteur voice with a growing international profile. Written and directed by filmmaker and visual artist Bára Anna, produced by Jakub Rálek for DIVIZE animace, this feature-length animated debut builds on a body of work that has already marked Stejskalová as one of the more distinctive emerging talents in Czech animation. Her stop-motion short Love Is Just a Death Away premiered in the US at SXSW, was shortlisted for the BAFTA Student Film Awards, and won multiple prizes, including two at Palm Springs. She was also the art director of Ondřej Moravec’s VR film Darkening, which premiered at Venice, while her current short, the underwater stop-motion musical 9 Million Colors, has toured the festival circuit after its 2025 premiere in Annecy’s Short Film Competition.

Set in a fog-covered mountain sanatorium, Inhalatorium follows 13-year-old Mara, sent there to treat her asthma, as she becomes entangled in the disappearance of a boy and the mysterious presence of Rýbrcoul, a spirit rooted in mountain folklore. The project remains in development with support from the Czech Audiovisual Fund and is aiming for completion in 2030. The team is seeking partners in France, Germany, and the Nordic region, along with collaborators in script development and visual design.

Children in the ruins of the future

Robot Names Otis, the debut feature by Filip Diviak, comes from MAUR film, one of the production companies most responsible for the international visibility of Czech animation. Produced by Mária Môťovská and Martin Vandas, the project follows a line of works that has recently included Pola Kazak’s Cannes-selected Weeds, the UniFrance-backed shorts Hurikan and Hello Summer, and especially the puppet feature Tales from the Magic Garden, which premiered at the Berlinale 2025, traveled widely, and won both the Czech Lion and the Slovak Sun in a Net awards for Best Animated Film. MAUR film’s recent momentum was further reflected in its nomination for Producer of the Year at Cartoon Movie Tributes 2026.

Robot Names Otis also marks a step up for Diviak, a rising Czech animator, illustrator, and director trained at Tomas Bata University in Zlín. Previously, his short films revealed a strong interest in telling socially inflected stories through the perspective of children and young people. Now his feature-length debut, a 2D animated sci-fi road movie, follows 13-year-old Sofi and her 10-year-old brother Hugo as they venture into a dangerous wasteland, guided by a damaged robot, in search of their mother and the hidden truth behind the city of Ekk. The film’s retro-futurist aesthetic and handcrafted sensibility lend the dystopian setting a surprising warmth, keeping it in a family-friendly register. The project has already been presented at Cartoon Springboard, Cartoon Movie, and the CEE Animation Workshop, with support from the Czech Audiovisual Fund, Creative Europe MEDIA, and Creative Voucher. It is expected to be finished in 2028, and the producers are currently seeking coproducers and a sales agent.

A darker premise underlies Lost Kids, a seven-part Czech-Vietnamese animated series written and directed by Dužan Duong, one of the latest breakthrough talents in the Czech Republic, with his generational dramedy Summer School, 2001. Duong’s latest work sees him make the move to animation while keeping the spotlight on youth, identity, and social unease. Produced by Tomáš Hrubý and Lukáš Kokeš for nutprodukce, with Duong for AZN kru, Lost Kids follows 13-year-old Zang, who joins a radical resistance group that uncovers a conspiracy: corporations are using AI therapists to manipulate people into uploading their consciousness to the cloud. The group, who call themselves “the Lost Kids,” plan a blackout to take down the data centers, but then realize that this would cause a digital genocide of all the minds that have been uploaded. Zang is caught between two extremist worldviews, forced to find the right way forward for herself. What begins as rebellion turns into a story of digital alienation, unstable identity, and the cost of freedom.

Duong’s film adds another animation title to nutprodukce’s growing track record in the field. After producing the widely traveled animated feature Tony, Shelly and the Magic Light, the company is now working on the feature debut by Daria Kashcheeva, whose puppet short Daughter won the Student Oscar. With its anime-inflected visual language and Gen Alpha orientation, Lost Kids broadens the Czech animation menu to include serial storytelling with a sharper youth edge. The team behind the project is seeking coproducers, broadcasters, and sales agents.

Horror begins at home

While several of the Czech projects showcased at Annecy open into mythic or dystopian worlds, Mould turns inward, into the intimate geography of home. This 6x22-minute mystery-drama series is written and directed by rising star Philippe Kastner. A FAMU graduate, Kastner first drew attention with Dede Is Dead, which screened at the Berlinale, then further bolstered his profile with Wolfie, a student short that entered the Student Academy Awards nominations in 2025. His films, often populated by animals or anthropomorphic figures, combine emotional directness with a taste for the eerie, the imperfect, and the quietly strange.

Produced by Karolína Davidová for 13ka and Tereza Havlová for BATCH film, Mould follows a group of children investigating the disappearance of their friend in a mold-infested apartment building where every neighbor seems to harbor a secret. The children’s perspective and anthropomorphic animal characters here underscore themes of disappearance, alcoholism, domestic violence, and buried family trauma. Meanwhile the visuals suggest a storybook-gothic world of soft hand-drawn textures and muted grayscale atmospheres, with childlike intimacy gradually giving way to dread. The project was part of KVIFF Talents 2025 and is now in the CEE Animation Workshop. It is also being developed with Finland’s Pyjama Films, France’s Anna Films, Czech studio DIVIZE animace, and Spanish screenwriter Pedro Rivera, as the team continues to shape the series for broadcasters, platforms, distributors, and sales partners.

Clay sibling comedy 

Also featured in Czech Pitch @ Mifa 2026 is a preschool project from Eliška Oz and Lee Oz, the duo behind Oz Animation, whose handmade work has already earned them a distinct place within the Czech landscape. Active across stop-motion, traditional animation, and 2D, the Ozes have built a unique visual profile, characterized by an eclectic, spontaneous approach and fondness for tactility, color, and playful transformation. With Bouba & Kiki, they bring that sensibility to a 13x4-minute preschool series aimed at younger audiences but rooted in the same expressive material language.

Written by Tomáš Kubeček and produced by Libor Nemeškal and Petr Babinec for Kouzelná animace, the series follows two clay siblings whose small everyday disagreements repeatedly swell into “big dramas” before settling down into cooperation and play. Bouba, exuberant and round, and Kiki, careful and pointed, offer a straightforward contrast for preschool viewers, with the mostly nonverbal storytelling strengthening the project’s international accessibility. Supported by the Czech Audiovisual Fund and aiming for completion in 2029, the series draws on the creators’ own experience of family life and sibling dynamics, resulting in a visually playful preschool property with clear international potential. The team is currently seeking European coproducers, broadcasters, distributors, a sales agent, and presales partners.