Promising Female Animation Talent Launches in Annecy

variety.com:

Lise Pedersen Six teams of budding animation professionals have pitched their projects at the Annecy Intl. Animation Film Festival as part of a new mentoring program for women from France and Africa launched by Les Femmes s’Animent (LFA), an organization that supports women in animation.The aim of the initiative, entitled “A Woman’s Journey,” is to help women who want to create short animated films but are not part of, nor have access to, the animation industry.

Each team consists of one author and one director who have developed a film project from scratch.Over the past six months, they have received both remote coaching sessions with a dedicated mentor, as well as three masterclasses on directing, writing and producing, and copyright legislation.

The courses were dispensed by the likes of Anca Damian, whose latest film “The Island” is competing for this year’s Cristal Award in Annecy, and Corinne Destombes, head of development at distinguished French production house Folimage.Three of the teams come from Africa and three from France.“Incomplete Woman” by Seunghui Choi and Lucie Marchais is the semi-autobiographical story of Haemi, a young girl from South Korea who lives in France with her boyfriend.

When her mother visits and finds out that her unmarried daughter is living with a man, a row breaks out. In the ensuing fight, Haemi is swallowed by a creature and travels back in time to her mother’s youth in a conservative, patriarchal South Korean society.“This is my first foray into animation – it has allowed me to use my imagination and move between past and present,” explained Choi, who moved to France from South Korea eight years ago to study film.