‘Allegro Non Troppo’ At 50: GKIDS Acquires Bruno Bozzetto Catalog

GKIDS has acquired North American rights to the film catalog of Italian animation pioneer Bruno Bozzetto, including his landmark 1976 “feature-length masterpiece” Allegro non Troppo.

Best known for its irreverent structure and sharp satirical edge, Allegro non Troppo will celebrate its 50th anniversary in 2026 with a newly restored U.S. premiere at the Metrograph in New York on March 27. The film will screen in its original Italian with English subtitles, paired with Fantasia on a double bill.

The deal brings Bozzetto’s full body of work under the GKIDS banner as the distributor continues to deepen its roster of international animation auteurs. While many may associate GKIDS specifically with distributing anime titles in the West, given the company’s tremendous success on that front and its recent acquisition by Toho, the company has long been one of the most important entities working to bring animation from around the world to North American theaters and homes.

Conceived as a comic rejoinder to Disney’s Fantasia, Bozzetto’s feature interweaves live-action sequences with animated shorts set to classical music. Its framing device, involving a tyrannical producer, a long-suffering animator, and an eccentric orchestra, skewers both high culture and industry pretensions, while the animated segments range from melancholic to absurdist. The film has long been regarded as a cult classic and a key work of 20th-century European animated satire.