Cannes Critics’ Week Selects Animated Films As Part Of Its Line-Up

Ice Merchants, João Gonzalez

• A father teaches his son the ways of collecting and transporting ice from their cabin on the edge of a cliff to a village far below them.
• 2d animated with a limited color palette of blues and oranges that emphasize the temperatures in and outside the comfy cabin.
• Director João Gonzalez’s previous work includes short films Nestor and The Voyager.
• A classically trained musician, Gonzalez also wrote the film’s score.

It’s Nice in Here, Robert-Jonathan Koeyers

• Rookie cop David and young Black girl Imani have drastically different memories of how things happened when the officer shot and killed her best friend Crimson in a corner shop.
• 2d-animated debut short from Robert-Jonathan Koeyers, a Willem de Kooning Academy alumni
• “It’s an attempt to paint a fragmented portrait of a boy where important pieces are missing and we’re deliberately not seeing the full picture,” explains Koeyers.

Scale, Joseph Pierce

• While driving down the highway, Will loses his sense of scale. A drug addict, the man must battle his inner demons to put reality back in order or risk becoming lost forever.
• Adapted from Will Self’s eponymous novella from the Grey Area short stories collection, director Joseph Pierce produced the film using rotoscoped, 2d animation.
• Pierce is currently developing his first feature. His previous shorts films include The Pub, Stand Up, and Clermont-Ferrand-winner A Family Portrait.

Everybody Loves Jeanne, Céline Devaux

• The live-action feature with animated sequences follows Jeanne and her inner monologue “Little Ghost,” a dancing, singing, hairy monster that lives in her head.
• Everybody Loves Jeanne (French title: Tout le monde aime Jeanne) is the highly-anticipated feature debut of director Céline Devaux, who returns to Cannes having impressed with 2015’s Sunday Lunch, that year’s César winner for best animated short.