Take a look at the official poster

This year, the poster has been created by French Canadian illustrator Michèle Lemieux, whose children’s books have received numerous prizes, including the Bologna Ragazzi Award, the highest international accolade in children’s literature, for Gewitternacht in 1997.

She started her career in animation by adapting this story into the short film Stormy Night (2003), which has also been awarded with a dozen prizes including the Crystal Bear at the Berlin Festival.

She then became acquainted with the Alexeieff-Parker pinscreen during a workshop given by Jacques Drouin at the NFB and was immediately enchanted by the device. So much so that she used it to make her second short, Here and the Great Elsewhere, which she finished in 2012.
The film went on to earn international acclaim at festivals in Brazil, Portugal, Poland and Estonia, and won the Grand Prix at the Wissembourg International Film Festival in 2012.

Michèle Lemieux is a drawing and illustration professor at the University of Quebec in Montreal. She is currently working on a third film, once again being made at the NFB on the pinscreen.

Click on the image to download it

Making the Annecy poster

"France is in the spotlight at Annecy 2016, and I feel very privileged to have been asked to create the Festival poster. For this country that I love, I wanted to give a happy and timeless image, representing its perpetual movement.

For me, the magic of animation is expressed in the thousands of drawings known as intervals, which are barely noticeable to the viewer but provide a daily task for those working in the industry. These intervals are the ingredients for movement and the raw material for every conceivable transformation, from subtle gestures to visual prowess. Thanks to these drawings, life appears and comes into the world through the microscope of time in which we find ourselves when making an animated film. I wanted to portray this with two characters, a man and a woman, who represent two key drawings, connected by a series of transparent intervals that refer to their furtive appearance, but also the symbol of the bond established between human beings."

Michèle Lemieux

Jessica Charbonneau from TagTeam Studio created the "signature" for the poster.

A new record for shorts, graduation films and TV and commissioned films

The Festival received almost 2,700 films, coming from 85 countries.

The Official Selection will present 54 short films in competition (34% made by women) including 11 in the Off-Limits category with France, Belgium, Canada and Germany leading the pack. 54 films make up the graduation category, with the majority made by girls, and there are 77 TV and commissioned films (an 80% increase from last year). And 31 short films in out of competition.

49 nationalities will be represented.

Films in the Official Selection are chosen by the Festival’s Artistic Director, Marcel Jean and the team from the Films and Progamme Planning department, Laurent Million, Yves Nougarède and Sébastien Sperer.

The Official Selection for feature films in and out of competition will be announced at the end of April.

Paying tribute to France

Its diversity, vitality and ambition makes French animation stand out from the rest and this first ever tribute a dozen programme planners have accepted to share their vision of it through the French Animation: The Mirror Effect programme and will present a fragmented, colourful and kaleidoscopic image of animated filmmaking in France.

Get accreditation before the prices go up!

Make the most of special rates for Festival, Meetings and Mifa accreditations before 1^st April 2016.

Get connected: Once you have accreditation, start to organise your visit using the Annecy Network, it gives you a list of participants, you can sign up for the video library, recruitment sessions and much more!