Think Oscars but for Animation!
The Annecy International Animation Film Festival was created in 1960 and takes place at the beginning of June in the town of Annecy, France. Initially occurring every two years, the festival became an annual event in 1998. It is one of the four international animated film festivals sponsored by the Association Internationale du Film d’Animation (or ASIFA, the International Animated Film Association). The festival is a competition between cartoon films of various techniques (animated drawings, cut-out papers, modeling clay, etc.) The competition is classified in various categories; feature films, short films, films produced for television and advertising, student films and films made for the internet.
The 2021 Annecy International Animated Film Festival begins on Monday, June 14 to Saturday, June 19, 2021.
This is the true story of a man, Amin, on the verge of marriage that compels him to reveal his hidden past for the first time. A secret he has been hiding for over twenty years threatens to ruin the life he has built for himself. He recounts his dramatic journey as a child refugee from Afghanistan to Denmark.
Directed by: Jonas POHER RASMUSSEN
Style: 2D Computer, live action
Country: Denmark, France, Norway, Sweden
Nimfa Dimaano, a perfume saleskitty, falls head over paws for Iñigo – a dashing dog about town. Trouble is, Nimfa still shares a shanty with her drab of a lover Roger – a mall janitor mongrel. Could this new dog in her life save Nimfa from her poor cat woes? In this animal world, amorous cats and dogs put their own spin on daytime soap opera.
Directed by: Avid LIONGOREN
Style: cut-outs, 2D Computer
Country: Phillipines
After the great Battle of The Gods, when Jiang Ziya is about to be named the Leader of the Gods, he is sent to Earth for a momentary mistake and spurned by the world. Jiang Ziya must make a difficult choice between his heart and his destiny. In the end, he finds his real self and restores the relationship between Human, God and Demon.
Directed by: Wei LI, Teng CHENG
Style: 2D / 3D Computer
Country: China
A young girl Josee, paraplegic from a very early age, lives in her own world between painting, books and her overflowing imagination. Tsuneo, in a marine biology faculty, would like to continue his studies in Mexico to be able to live his ultimate dream: to dive in tropical waters. For that, he needs money. Just then, a job literally falls into his lap when he collides with Josee.
Directed by: Kotaro Tamura
Style: Anime
Country: Japan
A small village looted in darkness, a family forced to flee. The two oldest children, Kyona and Adriel are quickly separated from their parents facing the road of exile alone. They embark on a heroic journey which takes them from childhood to adolescence in search of shelter, peace and the hope of finding refuge and their family. Crossing a continent torn apart by war and migrant persecution, these courageous siblings survive incredible challenges, before reaching a new world, free at last.
Directed by: Florence MIALHE
Style: Paint on glass
Country: Germany, France, Czech Republic
A young Syrian refugee girl finds a magical gateway to meet the great 13th century poet, Rumi, and helps him write the poem that 800 years later saves her life.
Directed by: Alex KRONEMER
Style: 2D Computer
Country: Canada, USA
By a fortunate coincidence, Juan is inspired and encouraged by a girl with the same name. Therefore, he decides to form a lion dance troupe with his friends, Cat and Dog, to break the constraints of reality and fight for themselves for once. It is a hilarious coming-of-age story about how they support each other through various hardships and eventually achieve their dreams.
Directed by: S. Hamilton
Style: 3D Computer
Country: China
When Herra, a young Czech woman, falls in love with Nazir, an Afghan, she has no idea what kind of life awaits her in post-Taliban Afghanistan, nor of the family she is about to integrate into. A liberal grandfather, an adopted child who is highly intelligent and Freshta, who would do anything to escape her husband’s violent grip.
Directed by: Michaela PAVLATOVA
Style: 2D Computer
Country: Czech Republic, France, Slovakia
Young Lubicchi and a man made of garbage, Poupelle live among the thick smoke from the chimneys of his isolated town. Lubicchi yearns to see the “stars” and to learn the truth his father always told him about.
Directed by: Yusuke HIROTA
Style: 2D / 3D Computer
Country: Japan
1960’s Siegheilkirchen, a small town in the Austrian hinterland is steeped in reactionary and ultra-Catholic attitudes. The son of a hard-working innkeeper and his wife, called Snotty Boy by all and sundry, is at odds with the narrow-minded confines of his home town. But his unstoppable talent for drawing gives him an outlet for his discontent.
Directed by: Marcus RosenMuller, Santiago LOPEZ JOVER
Style: 3D Computer
Country: Austria, Germany
The eight-year-old orphan Jonna is longing for a mother. One day, an old car stops outside the orphanage and out steps a gorilla who picks Jonna for adoption. It soon becomes clear that they have more things in common than they initially thought.
Directed by: Linda HAMBACK
Style: 2D Computer
Country: Sweden, Norway, Denmark
Van, the former leader of a warrior corps who fight for their homeland, is captured and seized as a slave. One night, vicious mountain dogs attack, causing a mysterious plague. Van escapes the chaos, helping a young girl who he decides to raise. Meanwhile, a doctor seeks a cure for this disease.
Directed by: Masashi ANDO, Masayuki MIYAJI
Style: 2D / 3D Computer / Anime
Country: Japan
Casual mention elicits enthusiastic response from commonly overlooked tourist destination.
Japan has become one of the world’s top tourist destinations, welcoming a record-breaking 42.7 million international visitors in 2025, a 15.8-percent increase from 2024, and on track to break the record this year. While this is great news for big cities like Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka, where tourists tend to spend most of their time and money, there are 44 other prefectures in Japan that are crying out for international visitors, and one of the most in need is Tottori Prefecture.
▼ No hoardes of tourists here.
Home to roughly 530,000-540,000 people, Tottori is the least populous prefecture in Japan. Compared to Tokyo’s roughly 14 million residents, Tottori has about 4 percent of Tokyo’s population, and given its distance from major urban centres, it ranks in the bottom tier for international tourist numbers.
▼ The trip to Tottori takes over five hours by train from Tokyo, using the fastest Shinkansen on the initial leg of the journey.
▼ Alternatively, it’s about three hours by train from Kyoto Station.
Despite the lack of tourists, Tottori has a wealth of tourist attractions, and one person who knows about its charms is Hollywood actress Anne Hathaway. On a recent trip to Japan to promote her new film, The Devil Wears Prada 2, released here on 1 May, Hathaway appeared on the popular weekend morning television program King’s Brunch, where she was asked where in Japan she would like to visit. She replied by saying she would like to visit Tottori, mentioning that she likes the sea, the beaches and the sand dunes.
▼ These are three things Tottori is famous for.
After the show aired on 6 May, it didn’t take long for news of Hathaway’s comments to reach Tottori. Within days, official Tottori-based government sites jumped on the PR opportunity, posting photos, videos and messages on social media.
On 9 May, the governor of Tottori, Shinji Hirai, extended an official invitation for Hathaway to visit, promising that a sand dune sculpture would be made in her likeness if she were to take them up on the offer.
Tottori prefecture’s official Instagram account reissued the governor’s invitation, and even included a cute illustration of him in the last slide.
Local tourism boards took to Twitter to share news of Tottori’s mention by the world-famous actress.
▼ This tweet says: “Even Hollywood stars are captivated by Tottori Prefecture”.
ハリウッドスターも魅了する #鳥取県
— 鳥取県観光連盟（とっとり旅【公式】） (@tottori_guide) June 9, 2026
ぜひ #とっとり旅 でステキな思い出を
Cities within the prefecture soon got in on the act, with the Sakaminato Tourism Association joining the chorus on 11 June.
▼ “We would be delighted if you could also visit Sakaiminato City.”
境港市にもお越しいただけると嬉しいです
— 境港観光協会 (@sakaiminato_net) June 11, 2026
If there was an Academy Award for Best Social Media Post, it would go to Yonago City, who went all out with its invitation, creating a clever skit inspired by The Devil Wears Prada franchise, complete with lookalike characters.
As that skit shows, many wonders await in Tottori, and there’s even an exclusive set of manhole covers featuring Sandshrew, who, as a nod to the famous sand dunes, is the prefecture’s tourism ambassador Pokémon.
While Hathaway is yet to respond to the invitations, we have our fingers crossed that she’ll make the journey to Tottori sometime in the near future. If she needs advice on how to get there, she could always call on former U.S. late-night talk show host Conan O’Brien, who put Tottori on the map back in 2018, when he visited Conan Town to collect 3 trillion yen from the mayor.
Sources: Instagram/@tottoriawesome, Instagram/@totorealpavilion, Twitter/@tottori_guide, San-in Chuo Shimbun
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Insert images: Pakutaso, ©SoraNews24
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