Louis Clichy’s ‘Iron Boy’ Wins Special Jury Prize At Animation-Packed Cannes

Animation had one of its strongest showings at Cannes in recent memory this year.

A wildly diverse field of features and shorts was spread across the festival’s official sections, from Un Certain Regard to Critics’ Week and La Cinef, and several titles generated some of the event’s loudest early reactions and biggest headlines. Critics’ Week even opened with Phuong Mai Nguyen’s In Waves, the first time ever that an animated feature inaugurated the section. The festival’s Marché du Film got in on the action, too, extending its animation program to three full days.

Yet when the awards were handed out on Saturday night, animation walked away with just two prizes. Louis Clichy’s hand-painted feature Iron Boy earned the Special Jury Prize in Un Certain Regard, and Lucas Acher’s hybrid student short Laser-Cat took first prize in La Cinef.

That said, animation’s limited presence in the winners’ circle seems to say less about the medium’s standing at Cannes than about how fiercely competitive this year’s festival was overall. Cannes programmers clearly embraced animation in 2026, giving major slots to titles that ranged from intimate auteur work to experimental student films.

Two awards, one of which went to a mostly live-action short, felt modest considering how visible animation was across Cannes this year, particularly in industry terms. The red carpet was as A-list as any for Leah Nelson’s Tangles, Iron Boy got overwhelmingly positive reviews, several of the fest’s biggest bidding wars focused on animation, and Jim Queen got one of the most fabulous ovations in the fest’s history, inspiring Cannes director Thierry Frémaux to say: “I’ve never seen a screening like this at Cannes.”

We highlighted titles from across the busy lineup, including the aforementioned Jim Queen, Olivier Clert’s Lucy Lost, Alain Gagnol’s Dog My Cats, Lizzy Hobb’s short Daughters of the Late Colonel, and Jean-Paul Guigue’s Blaise.

Iron Boy arrived at Cannes with serious momentum, inspired one of the year’s biggest bidding wars, and left with a theatrical distribution deal after Sony Pictures Classics snapped up North American rights. After strong reviews early in the fest, In Waves got a major deal of its own, picked up by Netflix for global distribution outside of France.

One notable animation absence from this year’s festival was the AI-generated Critterz, which failed to materialize despite months of hype and lofty promises. Its disappearance from the Croisette ultimately felt like a quiet win for animation made by actual artists.