The French Academy of Cinema Arts and Techniques, or better known as Academie des César, selected My Sunny Maad as the winner from three nominees. Also Little Nicholas - Happy as Can Be and Ernest and Celestine: A Trip to Gibberitia competed for the award in the Best Animated Film category. The award was handed over to director Michaela Pavlátová (pictured above), Czech producer Kateřina Černá and French producer Ron Dyens - see their speech HERE.

About the film

My Sunny Maad tells a story of Herra, a Czech woman, who falls in love with Nazir, an Afghan man, and she has no idea about the life that awaits her in post-Taliban Afghanistan, nor about the family she is about to join.

The film world-premiered in the Feature Films Competition of the Annecy International Animation Film Festival 2021, and won the Jury Award there. Furthermore, the film won prizes at the FICG in Guadalajara or at the Bucheon International Animation Festival and it was also screened at many other festivals all over the world, including Karlovy Vary IFF, Zurich IFF or Cairo IFF. My Sunny Maad was also nominated for the Golden Globe in the Best Picture – Animated category.

Production info

My Sunny Maad is produced by Petr Oukropec & Kateřina Černá of Negativ and co-produced by Ron Dyens of Sacrebleu Production (France), Peter Badač of BFILM (Slovakia), with co-producers Alkay Animation Prague, Czech Television, Gao Shan Pictures (France) and Innervision (France) also on board.

The project received support from the Czech Film Fund for both development and production with a total of EUR 806,923, as well as in the Production Incentives program, with additional backing from Eurimages, the CNC, the Slovak Audiovisual Fund, and the French regional funds Eurometropole and Région Réunion.

The world sales are handled by Totem Films and the film was released in France under the title Ma famille afghane on 24 April, 2022 by Diaphana.

About the director

Michaela Pavlátová garnered international attention with her short film Words, Words, Words in Annecy in 1991 (followed by an Oscar nomination in 1993). At the world's biggest animation festival in Annecy, she also presented shorts Repete (in 1995, Berlinale's Golden Bear for Best Short Film same year), Carnival of Animals (in 2007), Tram (winner of The Annecy Cristal in 2012) and celebrated feature film My Sunny Maad in 2021.

While working on My Sunny Maad, which is inspired by a novel by respected Czech journalist Petra Procházková, Pavlátová oversaw a team of more than 30 animators from the Czech Republic, Slovak Republic, and France and worked on this project while coordinating the workflow between the island of Réunion and animation studios Alkay Animation Prague and plutoon in Prague and Bratislava, respectively.