Annecy Opens With Surprise Guests, A Tribute To Marjane Satrapi, And The World Premiere Of ‘Minions & Monsters’

The 2026 Annecy International Animation Film Festival opened Sunday evening with a ceremony that balanced celebration, reflection, and blockbuster spectacle, culminating in the world premiere of Illumination’s Minions & Monsters, the latest entry in one of animation’s most commercially successful franchises.

The evening was less political than last year’s launch, but equally impactful in its own charming way.

Festival artistic director Marcel Jean welcomed attendees, introduced jury members, political dignitaries, and guests, and highlighted several prominent figures in attendance, including filmmaker Guillermo del Toro, a longtime Annecy regular whose appearances at the festival have become almost expected, although this year’s was a surprise.

Before introducing Illumination founder and CEO Chris Meledandri, Jean reminded the audience that the executive and his films are Annecy regulars. He also presented the duo with a pair of hand print plaques that will hang in the new La Cité internationale du cinéma d’animation’s hall of fame.

“It’s always a pleasure and an honor to have you on this stage in front of the best audience in the world,” Jean told Meledandri and the very friendly crowd. Illumination premiered the first Despicable Me film at Annecy 2010, and the studio has been back time and again, since.

For Meledandri, this year’s inauguration served as both a homecoming and a celebration of a partnership that has become increasingly important to both Annecy and Illumination.

“It is really an honor to be here for all of us at Illumination,” he said. “There is nowhere in the world that we would rather be premiering Minions & Monsters than here at Annecy in this magnificent festival in front of all of you.”

Meledandri repeatedly returned to the festival’s role as a gathering place for artists, describing Annecy as an event that not only celebrates animation but also “honors imagination and artistry.”

He also used the occasion to spotlight the hundreds of artists behind the film, many of whom work at Illumination Studios Paris, and several of whom were in attendance for the premiere.

“Tonight, I get to share my appreciation for all of the care that has been poured into every one of the frames of this movie by hundreds of artists sitting in the center of Paris at Illumination Studios,” he said.

That acknowledgment carried particular weight in Annecy. Although Illumination is headquartered in California, its creative identity has long been intertwined with France through its Paris studio, formerly Mac Guff, which has animated the Despicable Me and Minions films. Over the past decade and a half, the franchise has generated more than $5 billion at the global box office, making Illumination one of the industry’s defining success stories and one of the most visible examples of large-scale feature animation being produced in France.

Meledandri also explained why Minions & Monsters leaves contemporary settings behind for 1920s Hollywood. “The dawn of cinema in 1920s Hollywood is not an obvious place to begin a movie about Minions, but it is the perfect era to set a story that honors cinema and pays homage to the inspiration for the Minions themselves, the silent clowns, Keaton, Lloyd, Chaplin,” he said. The executive added that the setting ultimately became “a great setting for a story of a Minion who loves to draw and dreams about making a movie.”

While most of the evening was spent in celebration, the ceremony’s most emotional moment came from Annecy mayor François Astorg, who used part of his time on stage to discuss the importance of freedom, its relationship to the arts, and to pay tribute to the late Marjane Satrapi, whose death earlier this month sent shockwaves through the animation and comics communities.

I would like us to have a thought for Marjane Satrapi. She left us a few weeks ago, and I think she embodied that freedom. Some of you remember her book, Woman, Life, Freedom. Some of you, of course, remember her film, Persepolis, where she transformed her own story into a universal fable. And she reminds us that freedom is not a given and never will be. So, we need you. We need animation. We need you in Annecy.

Astorg concluded by thanking attendees for continuing to make Annecy a place where animation can challenge audiences and shape public discourse.

The evening ended with the world premiere of Minions & Monsters, directed by Pierre Coffin, who made a very brief appearance to set up the film, and set in 1920s Hollywood, where the Minions attempt to make a monster movie inspired by the silent-film comedians who helped shape cinema.

The film opens in U.S. theaters on July 1, giving Annecy the distinction of launching what is likely to become one of the summer’s biggest animated releases, and continuing the long tradition of Gru and his yellow companions introducing themselves to the world at the French festival.