The Rabbi’s Cat, a 3-D animated feature directed by Joann Sfar (creator of the original graphic novel) and Antoine Delesvaux, took the top prize at the Annecy International Animation Festival. The Rabbi’s Cat, which is published here by Pantheon, has been nominated for several Eisner Awards (see “Eisner Nominations Released”). Just as Marjane Satrapi co-directed the animated adaptation of her Persepolis, so Sfar, who had previously directed a biopic of French singer Serge Gainsbourg in 2010, was able to helm the adaptation of his graphic novel, which is just one of numerous European comic book properties that are being adapted for the movies (see “Euro-Comics Headed to the Big Screen”).

 

The Rabbi’s Cat graphic novel is set in a Sephardic Jewish household in Algeria in the 1920s. The eponymous feline swallows a parrot and becomes loquacious and quite philosophical.

 

The Annecy festival, which is held every June in France, is truly international in scope. As Variety pointed out, an anime film, the Fuji TV produced Colorful directed by Keiichi Hara won the Audience Award, and the festival audience was thrilled to see a portion of a new 3-D reboot of Leiji Matsumoto’s Captain Harlock Space Pirate anime, which is getting the extra-dimensional treatment at the hands of Appleseed director, Shinji Aramaki.