(Annecy) The Annecy International Animation Film Festival has unveiled the first images of the highly anticipated Spider-Man Across the Spider-Verse and announced a record number of accreditations at its opening on Monday, a sign of the sector’s vitality.
Posted at 11:12 a.m.
For its return to a completely face-to-face edition, the festival filled up with 13,000 accredited people, 5% more than in 2019, from 100 countries, announced its director Mickaël Marin to AFP.
This record “is consistent with the boom in animation at the global level”, he commented, considering that the sector is “not experiencing the crisis”.
This number is reached without Chinese professionals, prevented from coming by the health crisis, and without Russians, who until then held one of the main pavilions at the film market, but whose official delegation is no longer invited since the invasion of Ukraine.
Several Ukrainian professionals, on the other hand, were graciously welcomed, specified Mr. Marin, and several countries are present for the first time, including Malawi, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.
Before the screening Monday evening at the opening of the film Minions 2—Once Upon a Time Gruthe festival nurtured the buzz with the presentation by its directors of the first images of Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Versea year before its worldwide release.
With a revelation: the name of the “supervillain” of the film, “The Spot”, “whose body is covered in dots like inkblots”, which he can use to travel between universes or as a weapon, underlined one of the co-directors, Justin Thompson. His voice, in the original version, is entrusted to actor Jason Schwartzman, a regular with Wes Anderson (Darjeeling Express, The Grand Budapest Hotel…).
After the Oscar for best animated film won in 2019 by the first part, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, Sony studios promise even more visual effects for a film mixing as many 2D and 3D animation techniques and different graphic styles as possible. In total, the film will have 240 new characters evolving in six parallel universes.
The festival is due to end on Saturday with the presentation of the Golden Crystal to the best film in competition.