Japanese Market Meeting Led To Annecy Winner's Italian Partners

A meeting in Tokyo three years ago brought Italian producers into an animated film that later won top honors at a major French festival.

Singaporean director Ervin Han told a panel at TIFFCOM, the content market of the Tokyo International Film Festival, that he first attended the market in 2023 and met producer Cristiano Bortone and his team at Altri Occhi there. The Italian group later joined "The Violinist" as co-producers. The animated feature, which Han co-directed and produced, won the top prize this year at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival in France. Han said the film took 10 years from conception to completion and covers a decade of friendship.

The panel was titled "Anime's New Frontier: Structuring & Financing International Co-Productions" and was moderated by Kawano Masao, program manager at Into Global. Han returned to TIFFCOM this year as a producer pitching "A Banquet for Hungry Ghosts," an animated feature about food, horror and temptation, with partners from Singapore, Taiwan, Malaysia and Ireland. Han also said promotion of his projects has been harder than making them.

Ilan Urroz, CEO of France's Foliascope, said co-production is not a new idea and pointed to platform partnerships. Under French rules, streaming services must put at least 20% of the revenue they earn in France into European or French-language original film and audiovisual production, a figure that rises to 25% for some services that offer films within 12 months of their theatrical release. The requirement covers animation along with other genres. Urroz named Netflix, Disney+, Crunchyroll, Prime Video and HBO Max as the leading platforms in France.

Sakurai Taiki, CEO of Salamander Inc., has spent more than 25 years in anime on over 100 titles, and said people and talent matter most. "Partners are the key to success," he said. Asked how to find co-production partners, Urroz replied, "Be creative, and don't forget that every project is also a journey of a group of people."

The panel's speakers agreed that international anime co-productions work best when overseas partners are involved early, with financing, deal structures and rights management considered from development through release.