French filmmaker and artist Michel Gondry has been announced as a guest of honor at this year’s edition of the Annecy International Animation Film Festival, running from June 8 to 14, 2025.
Gondry will be presented with an Honorary Cristal award, following in the footsteps of previous honoraries such as Terry Gilliam and Wes Anderson who were similarly feted at the 2024 edition of the festival.
It will be the Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind director’s first visit to the French lakeside festival billed as the biggest animation festival in the world, although his work Is the Man Who Is Tall Happy?: An Animated Conversation with Noam Chomsky played at the 2014 edition, winning the Prix André-Martin for best French animated feature.
Annecy pointed to Gondry’s work on music videos for artists such as Björk, The White Stripes, Steriogram and Daft Punk as another motivation for the honor.
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“Michel Gondry assumes the legacy of Georges Méliès as much as that of Norman McLaren. His boundless creativity and innovative approach have brought hand-crafted animation back into the mainstream, as brilliantly illustrated by The Science of Sleep,” said Annecy’s Artistic Director Marcel Jean, referring to the director’s 2006 sci-fi comedy sparked by a bedtime story.
Gondry’s honor ties in with a previously announced sidebar exploring the use of animation in music videos. Other focuses will include a tribute to Hungarian animation.
The 2025 edition will follow a record-breaking 2024 edition attended by 17,400 accredited guests, including 6,500 animation professionals at the event’s MIFA market which celebrates its 40th edition this year.
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