The Eighth edition of Cartoon Movie ended on an optimistic note this past weekend as awards were handed out to individuals and companies that had made huge strides in the feature toon business in Europe. This year’s Best European Director honors were given to Nick Park and Steve Box for their Oscar-winning feature Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. Gebeka Films in France was the recipient of the Best European Distributor of the Year, while Aardman took home the Best European Producer of the Year honor for Wallace & Gromit.
According to the organizers 480 creatives, producers, buyers, distributors and investors from 29 countries took part in the event, which took place March 9-11 in Potsdam-Babelsberg in Germany. There was a 25% increase in the number of participants from the previous edition and a total budget of 300 million euros was presented at the event. Since the first edition of Cartoon Movie in 1999, 97 animated feature projects have been produced in Europe.
Among the completed features which screened at the event this year were Stefan Fjeldmark and Jesper Moller’s Asterix and the Vikings (produced by M6 Studio), Baltasar Pedrosa’s Gisaku (Filmax, Spain), Michel Ocelot and Benedicte Galup’s Kirikou and the Wild Beasts (Les Armateurs, France), Angel de la Cruz and Manuel Gomez’s Midsummer Dream (Dygra Films, Spain), Jorgen Lerdam and Anders Sorensen’s Pettson & Findus: The Tomte Machine (TV-Loonland, Happy Life Animation AB, A. Film A/S/ UK, Sweden, Denmark), Thilo Rothkirch and Piet de Rycker’s The Little Polar Bear: The Mysterious Island (Rothkirch, Cartoon-Film, Warner Bros., Ent. GmbH, Germany) and Christian Volckman’s Renaissance (Onyx Films, LuxAnimation, UK).
The next edition of Cartoon Movie is scheduled for March 8-10, 2007. In October of this year, Cartoon Master, another animation-related event will take place in Potsdam-Babelsberg: The theme of this gathering will be ‘Improving, funding and exposure of animation features.’ Cartoon Movie is supported by the Media Program of the European Union, the Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg, the Ministry of Economic Affairs of the Land Brandenbrg, the Mitteldeutsche Medienforderung, FFA and ILB. The German co-organizer is NFP Teleart. For more information, visit www.cartoon-media.be.
