The Annecy International Animation Film Festival seemed to have a pretty big year in 2026, as several major studios—including Disney, Warner Bros., and Netflix—popped up in France to announce big new projects. That increased level of industry focus was matched by appreciation for the variety of talents in actual competition this year, which were recognized by the 66-year-old fest’s awards ceremony on Saturday. Normally, we’d present those winners as a simple list of names and accolades, but honestly, part of the fun of animation lies in seeing a wide swathe of things you’d never seen before—so why not tackle these winners through their trailers, instead?
First up, let’s look at the victors in the fight for 2026’s top prize, the Cristal, in both the feature and short-length categories: Raul Garcia and Ervin Han’s Singapore-set The Violinist in the former category, and Don Hertzfeldt’s Paper Trail in the world of shorts:
Variety notes that The Violinist—a co-production with Spanish producers, and Singapore’s first win at the festival—was a bit of a dark horse; that’s at least in part because it was up against strong contenders that ended up taking what are essentially the fest’s second and third-place awards: Former Pixar animator Louis Clichy’s coming-of-age story Iron Boy and Alberto Vázquez’s extremely trippy Decorado. (Iron Boy, for its part, picked up multiple awards this year, including the Audience Award.)
Meanwhile, over in the festival’s “Contrechamp” sidebar—reserved, basically, for weirder stuff—the grand prize went to Jean-Paul Guigue and Dimitri Planchon’s teen oddball feature Blaise. The category’s Jury Award went to lush-looking Japanese-French co-production A New Dawn.
Not every film honored at Annecy has a trailer available online, including shorts like France’s My Bellyaching Skin and Germany’s Core Dump, which won the Alexeïeff – Parker and Off-Limits Awards, because god damn if festival organizers won’t bend over backwards to not say things like “third place.” That being said, if you want to end on something pleasantly trippy, there is a trailer out there for God Is Shy, which came in second to Hertzfeldt’s film, while also claiming the short film competition’s audience prize:
You can view a full list of all the winners at this year’s Annecy Film Festival here.
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