This January, celebrate the eighth edition of Animation First, the biggest animation festival in the United States! This year's festival will run from Tuesday, January 21 through Sunday, January 26, and will present seven feature-length films and five short film programs, with a special focus on Swiss animation. Curators Delphine Selles-Alvarez and Chloe Dheu explain, "The 2025 edition of Animation First offers a bold mix of features, shorts, talks, and VR that range from family-friendly to experimental and off the charts. Playful, serious, engaging, and at times radical, the festival will transport audiences to places far and wide."

This year, the festival presents seven feature-length films (including three U.S, two New York, and one East Coast Premiere) and five short film programs. Fifteen guests from around the world join us for filmmaker talks, a first look presentation, and QandA discussions. Back by popular demand, Animation Speak/Easy joins us for the second year in a row, as does our juried competition of the new Francophone shorts programs. The festival will also feature virtual reality experiences, our annual Student Short Film Competition, and even an interactive make-your-own stop-motion experience for guests in the Tinker Lounge. We're also thrilled to have Swiss animator and director Georges Schwizgebel design our second-annual limited-edition Animation First series poster.  

With films for adults, teens, and kids, the festival is crafted to engage and entertain guests of all ages throughout nearly a week of programming. Buy your festival pass today!

Schedule of Events:

10:15 am: Yuku and the Himalayan Flower

By Arnaud Demuynck and Remi Durin, 2022, France, 62min, DCP
Voiced by Lily Demuynck Deydier, Agnes Jaoui, Arno
In French with English subtitles

In this animated musical adventure, Yuku sets off on a daring quest to find the magical Himalayan flower that's said to hold the power to heal her grandmother. Armed with nothing but her ukulele and a heart full of songs, she ventures deep into the mountains, where wild creatures and unexpected challenges await. Along the way, Yuku hopes to make new friends and discover the true power of love as she faces this once-in-a-lifetime adventure.

11:00 am - 6:30 pm: Virtual Reality

Throughout the festival, L'Alliance New York's Library will be free and open to the public for virtual reality experiences from French studios and distributors, including Ito Meikyu by Boris Labbe, Grand Prize winner at Venice Film Festival.

Ito Meikyu
by Boris Labbe, 2024, France, 20min
US Premiere

Ito Meikyu, which loosely translated means "wandering thread," is a virtual reality experience that develops around references from Japanese art history and literature (The Fukinuki Yatai, The Tale of Genji, The Pillow Book) and unfolds as a large sensory fresco with strong emotional potential. A set of drawn, animated, and sound scenes together recreate a kind of subjective world in the form of a labyrinth. The virtual wandering space-composed of fractal architectures, and inhabited by plants, objects, animals, men, women, motifs and calligraphy-allows us to access different scenes based on the randomness of our choices. The result is a kind of hide-and-seek game with the user as the omniscient spectator.

2:00 pm: Artist Talk: In Conversation with Georges Schwizgebel

A celebrated figure of Swiss film animation as well as a master visual storyteller, Georges Schwizgebel is a consummate animator whose work bursts with colors, sounds and imagery. Often working alone, Schwizgebel creates films that are intricately timed, painted, edited, and scored, mixing a playful approach to narration with breathtaking formalism. In this talk, Schwizgebel will discuss his prolific career, as well as his artistic approaches, recurrent themes-such as spiral movements, loops, and metamorphoses-and the importance of music in his work. Schwizgebel will also present several of his films during the event.

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2:15 pm: The Twelve Tasks of Asterix

Dir. Rene Goscinny and Albert Uderzo, 1976, France, 80min, DCP
In French with English subtitles

Set during the Roman Empire, Asterix and Obelix-whose entire village of Gauls (aided by a magic potion) managed to defeat the invading Roman forces-take on twelve challenges assigned by an exasperated Julius Caesar. The emperor hopes that this challenge, based on the Twelve Labors of Hercules, could finally win them the Roman Empire. This second film adaptation by the co-creators of the best-selling comic book series Asterix brings iconic duo Asterix and Obelix to the big screen in this newly restored version.

Rene Goscinny and Albert Uderzo's characters are beloved in France and beyond, enchanting generations of families around the world since their creation in 1959. The wildly popular books have been adapted into countless features and TV series in cartoon, animation, and live action formats-but The Twelve Tasks of Asterix is special. It's based on an original screenplay and was the first to use the Xerography Process of animation.

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4:30 pm: Caught in Moving Sand: The Films of Gisele and Nag Ansorge

Discover the work of Gisele and Nag Ansorge, two pioneers of Swiss animation who developed sand animation to create an original and mesmerizing body of shorts that includes their groundbreaking The Raven (1967), as well as Fantasmatic (1969), Anima (1977) and Sabbath (1991), their last film before Gisele passed away.

The Ansorge's sand animation films have been restored by the Swiss Film Archive and the Omnimago Laboratory in Germany, with support from the Memoriav Association. The color variations, which are sometimes noticeable from one shot to another, have been preserved.

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4:30 pm: Artist Talk: Kristof Serrand's Cabinet of Curiosities

Lauded French animator Kristof Serrand will reveal what feeds an artist's soul and creative mind as he guides the audience through the paintings, films, music, and creators who have influenced his work and enchanted his childhood. Using Samuel F.B. Morse's painting Gallery of the Louvre as his starting point, Serrand will lead the audience through his personal gallery of art and pop culture items, discuss makers he admires, and tell stories of the greats he's worked with throughout his 40-year career-from his time at Gaumont to Steven Spielberg's Amblimation to DreamWorks to Netflix.

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6:30 pm: The Legends of Paris

By Amelie Harrault, 2024, France, 52min, DCP
Narrated by Cecile de France
In French with English subtitles

See the first episode of French director Amelie Harrault's animated four-part television series that is centered on the storied literary and art scene of 19th century Paris. It follows the greats-Hugo, Berlioz, Chopin, Delacroix, Courbet, Baudelaire, Balzac, and Dumas-through the most impactful moments of their rule-breaking creative careers. As destined paths cross, paintbrushes and pens are wielded to awaken society and reshape history. Entirely told in traditional 2D animation, and featuring gorgeous scenes evoking Paris of the 1800s, Harrault paints a visually rich portrait of these masters and the turbulent times in which they lived.

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8:45 pm: Harmony

By Bertrand Dezoteux, 2024, France, 74min, DCP
In French with English subtitles

Harmony follows Jesus Perez as he lands on a visually striking planet populated with hybrid creatures and landscapes. The planet's inhabitants, with bodies reminiscent of both Hieronymus Bosch's art and a post-human future, embody a colorful yet unsettling aesthetic. This unique tale explores new possibilities in storytelling, with a focus on low-fi imagery and unconventional narrative structures. A contemplative space opera, the film offers a universe of unstable characters, shifting realities, and reimagined possibilities, all filtered through 3D visuals, sounds, and music.

As a companion to the film, Bertrand Dezoteux created a website: harmonie.center/en. The platform engages audiences to delves into Jesus Perez' larger mission and enterprise, "Harmonie Center."

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