‘Flee,’ ‘Melvile,’ Charades Take Top Honors at Cartoon Movie, While Genre Adaptation ‘Darling’ Makes Market Splash

variety.com:

Ben Croll Returning to in-person gatherings after last year’s online event, this year’s Cartoon Movie pitch and co-production forum saw the teams behind 57 animated features pitch their development projects before 930 European industry delegates from 19 countries.

Running over March 8 – 10 in the southwest city of Bordeaux in France, this year’s forum saw both international buyers (totalling 297 overall – a 12% increase from the previous edition) and adult skewing projects notch upward – two facts not wholly unrelated.Whether on purpose or by some happy twist of fate, the four beneficiaries of this year’s Cartoon Movie Tribute Awards reflected a pair of key industry trends.At an event where one third of the pitch projects were based on preexisting material, it was thus fitting that adaptation “Even Mice Belong in Heaven” — directed by Denisa Grimmová & Jan Bubeníček, co-produced by Czechia’s Fresh Films, France’s Les Films du Cygne, Slovakia’s Cinemart and Poland’s Animoon – would win for Producer of the Year, and that the graphic novel inspired “Melvile” – directed by Romain Renard and Fursy Teyssier, produced by Belgium’s Need Productions and co-produced by France’s Creative Touch and Special Touch Studios – would claim the Eurimages Co-Production Development award.

And in a program that saw 37% of the pitch titles aimed at adult audiences (another significant increase from previous years), the prizes for Distributor of the Year going to Charades and for Director of the Year to “Flee” filmmaker Jonas Poher Rasmussen felt all the more auspicious.

Indeed, the Paris-based sales and distribution outfit cut an outsized figure at the Bordeaux event, backing buzz projects like Alberto Vázquez’s “Unicorn Wars,” Anaïs Caura’s.