Top Titles From Portugal at Annecy, from Milestones to Stunning 2D and a Vibrant New Generation With Attitude and High-Art   

By John Hopewell, Jamie Lang, Callum McLennan

(According To The variety) As ever more Portuguese directors plan their first animated feature, Annecy is staging a timely Tribute to Portuguese Animation, its 2024 Country of Honor, with a seven section spread of key titles.   

Variety has made its own selection of that selection, profiling modern milestones such as Abi Feijo’s “The Outlaws” and José Miguel Ribeiro’s “The Suspect” and taking in Regina Pessoa’s “Uncle Thomas, Accounting for the Days,” the dazzling 2D of BAP, Zagreb Animafest winner “The Garbage Man” and Oscar-nominated ‘Ice Merchants.” 

There’s a larger narrative to the titles: the step-by-step and very often collaborative growth of a craft industry of social point and high artistic ambition prized at home and ever more abroad. 

“Ice Merchants,” (João Gonzalez, 2022)

Portugal’s first ever Oscar nominee, in any category. Every day a father and son parachute from a rickety house suspended by pulleys above the vertigo-inducing abyss of an icy cliff in order to sell ice to a village thousands of feet below. Painterly in palette and superbly scored by Gonzalez from the sound of creaking ropes to his music, an edge-of-the -eat thriller whose real triumph is its heartrending tale of loss and the saving grace of family love. Produced by Bruno Caetano at Coletivo Audiovisual (COLA), the Royal College of Art and Michaël Proença at Wildstream.

“The Outlaws,” (Abi Feijó, 1993)

If modern Portuguese animation lifts off, it is most probably with Feijó’s “The Outlaws,” a Special Jury Award winner at 1994’s Cartoon d’Or. A fully developed narrative – a Feijó hallmark – brooding orchestral score and flickering black and white drawing on paper compose a film noir of large political point about Portugal and Spain’s own 1940s crime world. Here that means Portugal’s illicit part in the slaughter of Republic renegades caught hiding in border mountains after defeat in the Civil War. A bracing modern classic.

“Tale of the Cat and the Moon,” (Pedro Serrazina, 1995)

Serrazina’s first short and another early modern title which helped put Portugal on the international map, proving a major hit abroad after screening in competition at Cannes in 1996. The tale of a cat enchanted by an ever elusive moon is drawn in inspired black and white with sharp light, dark shadows and swirling figures, the tale capped by a dreams-can-come-true ending. Produced by Abi Feijó’s Filmógrafo. 

“The Suspect,” (“A Suspeita,” José Miguel Ribeiro, 1999)

Another modern milestone in Portuguese animation. Four figures share a train compartment on a slow trip through picturesque hills. But “Train Killer” is on the loose, one occupant reads in his newspaper, and he fears he’s one of the occupants. A stop-motion comedy sluiced with Hitchcockian suspense and humor which won a 2000 Cartoon d’Or and made the reputation of Ribeiro, one of Portuguese animation’s modern – and most stylistically eclectic – greats. Ahead, his love affair with Africa, expressed in travel memoir “A Journey to Cape Verde” (2010), an island road movie of self discovery, and Angola-set Annecy animated feature hit “Nayola” (2022).  

“Tragic Story With Happy Ending,” (Regina Pessoa, 2005)

A Crystal Award winner at Annecy, going on to become the most multi-prized film in Portuguese history. Pessoa used photocopies with images scratched into India ink on glossy paper to create this short’s aesthetic. It’s a story of acceptance, by oneself and one’s community, as we track a girl with a heartbeat too loud for everyone. Believing she has the heart of a bird, she longs to take flight as the individual she truly is. The middle child of Pessoa’s trilogy on childhood which began with “A noite” and was completed by the Christopher Plummer-narrated “Kali the Little Vampire.” 

“Uncle Thomas, Accounting for the Days,” (Regina Pessoa, 2018)

A 2019 Annecy Jury Award winner, and the crowning triumph – to date – for Pessoa, creator of this year’s Annecy poster, the godmother of MIFA campus and Masterclass speaker as part of the Portuguese Animation Country of Honor. Exacting in its style – adding stop motion to her traditional 2D and a sense of engraving – “Uncle Thomas,” is, however, initially personal in inspiration, a tribute to Pessoa’s own uncle who suffered some form of OCD but nevertheless lit in her love of drawing. A deeply moving homage

Augur,” (David Doutel, Vasco Sá, 2018)

Over the last 20 years, there has been no more fertile breeding ground for young Portuguese animation talent than Bando À Parte, set up in 2011, and co-operative BAP Animation Studio, launched in 2018. Via them Doutel and Sá have produced a significant number of the shorts featured at Annecy’s Portugal County of Honor Tribute. They are also, however, directors of four shorts, three at Annecy: 2014’s “Soot,” 2018’s “Augur” and 2022’s “Garrano.” 2D shorts of often stunning beauty, they are also psychological dramas offering memorable portraits of male loss, hopelessness and callousness, set in the context of Northern Portugal.