Hasta La Motion!

The 14th edition of the International festival for animated film – Fantoche celebrated humanity in its most moving form. Switzerland’s biggest animation film festival registered about 24,000 entries and in the past six days was frequented by Swiss and International animation film fans. The varied program list with special programs like “Humanité Animée”, “Hors Concours” and the “Bagno Popolare”, which took place in the baths district, addressed a broad audience including industry professionals and generated a large interest. Now, the International jury has selected the following films as competition winners: “Before Love” by Russian Igor Kovalyov as Best Film in the International Competition. In the Swiss Competition, “Das Leben ist hart” by Simon Schnellmann was honoured as Best Swiss. Lucie Sunkova won the Best Kids award in the category For a young audience. Next year’s festival edition will take place from 5 to 10 September in Baden.

In six cinemas with a total of 1,307 seats, 14 feature film premieres were shown as well as 321 short films from 23 countries. A variety of workshops, exhibitions transformed Baden into a vibrant festival city. Particularly the feature film premieres Ma vie de Courgette and Kubo and the Two Strings sold out quickly and dazzled audiences.

The Boy and the Beast

The festival’s “Industry Day”, whose program has this year been expanded to incorporate further topics, has enabled Fantoche to put the artistic representatives of the sector in contact with its commercial players. Fantoche gave the increasingly important commercial side of animated film space at the festival, with renowned brands such as Swisscom, FREITAG or Stories AG making an appearance. The presentation of DreamWorks, head of animation, Simon Otto, sold out quickly. Georges Schwizgebel, one of last year’s award winners and producer of the 2016 festival trailer, filmmaker Konstantin Bronzit and director Jeanette Bonds graced Baden with their presence as jury members.

This year’s “Animation goes multimedia” supporting programme was designed by two curators: Ana Ascencio, jury member at Fantoche 2015 and curator of Mapping Festival in Geneva.

Fantoche is presenting a “Hors Concours” programme for the first time: works from the submitted short films that tell especially engaging stories, make controversial political statements, demonstrate technical innovations or use a precise punchline have been selected. The programme is intended to supplement the other competition programmes. The “Humanité Animée” programme brought together the most significant questions about humanity and showcased perspectives from the 21st century in five short film programmes, two feature films and an accompanying exhibition.

For festival director, Annette Schindler, the festival was a success. She emphasises how important it is that Fantoche is appreciated by the city’s residents, the canton of Argovia and the rest of Switzerland. Schindler concluded: “Our efforts paid off and the broad choice of French-language programmes with films, talks and workshops were well attended. It was a real pleasure to hear French-speaking film fans everywhere I went. We noticed the quality of the Chinese films during the selection process this year, and indeed, the jury confirmed this assumption. Having more guests than ever before was also a positive aspect of this year’s festival edition. You could feel people’s desire to exchange ideas and make contacts. This potential is really promising and gives us new ideas for Fantoche 2017.”


Here’s the list of awardees from this year’s festival:

International Competition

Jury – Jeanette Bonds (US), Geoffrey Lillemon (NL/US), Vullnet Sanaja (Kosovo), Katja Schmid (D), Georges Schwizgebel (CH)

Best Film: “Before Love”, Igor Kovalyov RU 2015
High Risk: “Monkey, Jie Shen CN 2015
New Talent: “Forever”, Zhong Su CN 2016
Best Sound: “Any Road”, Boris Labbé, Daniele Ghisi FR 2016
Best Visual: “Among the Black Waves”, Anna Budanova RU 2016
International Audience Award: “Mr Madila”, Rory Waudby-Tolley, GB 2015
Special Mention: “LÖSS”, Yi Zhao NL/CN 2016
Honorary Award of Baden: “Blind Vaysha”, Theodor Ushev CA 2016

Swiss Competition

Jury – Konstantin Bronzit (RU), Julie Charnay (FR), Mark Shapiro (US)

Youth Jury – Lausanne: Marion Fredembach, Nicolas Moreau. Tessin: Claudia Campoli, Edoardo Nerboni, Olmo Spinedi, Charlotte Stamm. Wettingen: Beth Barnes, Daniel Byrne, Yuchen Chang

Best Swiss: “Das Leben ist hart”, Simon Schnellmann DE/CH 2015
High Swiss Risk: “Analysis Paralysis”, Anete Melece, CH 2016
New Swiss Talent: “Novembre”, Marjolaine Perreten, FR 2015
Fantastic Swiss: “One, Two, Tree”, Yulia Aronova, CH/FR 2015
Swiss Youth Award: “Hypertrain”, Etienne Kompis, Fela Bellotto, CH 2016
Special Mention: “Au revoir Balthazar”, Rafael Sommerhalder, CH 2016
Swiss Audience Award: “Analysis Paralysis”, Anete Melece, CH 2016

Kids Film Competition

Kids Jury
The films were judged by a jury of seven children aged between six and 12 which awarded the “Best Kids” prize. The Kids were supervised by “Zauberlaterne”.

Best Kids: “L’arbre”, Lucie Sunkova, FR/CZ 2015
Children’s Audience Award: “Taking the Plunge”, Elizabeth Ku-Herrero, Nicolas Manfredi, Marie Raoult, Thaddaeus Andreades, US 2015

After the festival, Fantoche’s “Best-of” programmes will be touring Switzerland. More than twenty cinemas across Switzerland and in various international cities will be screening “Best of Fantoche on Tour” with the prize winning films from the International and Swiss Competition and “Best Kids 2016”.

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