Our festival correspondents have brought back a little something for everyone this year: the music of Maestro, high-octane Hindi-language action, “squelchy” stop-motion and so much more in their twenty best.

In an already stacked year for animated excellence, Kambole Campbell recaps the highlights of 2023’s enlivened edition of the best animation film festival in the world—paper airplanes, big feelings, rabbits and all. 

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem director Jeff Rowe and production designer Yashar Kassai on mining inspiration from high school sketchbooks, their favorite anime series and, oui oui, the French New Wave.

The creators of the new Disney+ sci-fi animated anthology Kizazi Moto: Generation Fire share their ambition and pan-African scope at Annecy.

At Annecy 2023, animation correspondent Kambole Campbell chats with directors Nick Bruno and Troy Quane and graphic novelist ND Stevenson about bringing their titular shape-shifting heroine to the big screen with Nimona.

Intersectionality, internationality and 100 years of Disney are embraced at the opening of the 2023 Annecy International Animation Film Festival, as Kambole Campbell reports. 

Kambole Campbell talks with Suzume director Makoto Shinkai about navigating the trauma of Japan’s largest earthquake, hiding Miyazaki Easter eggs and animating a three-legged chair-boyfriend.  

Unicorn Wars director Alberto Vázquez explains the bloody military mayhem of his Bambi-meets-Apocalypse Now war-epic, forest-survival movies, and working with friends.

As the Annie Awards and Oscars approach, Kambole Campbell catches up with Turning Red’s director about the reaction to her semi-biographical hit, Tuxedo Mask as ideal male ally, and why there are five of 4*TOWN.