5/6/2023
Generation
For the third consecutive year, Next Lab Generation, the benchmark workshop for the animation sector supported by the Community of Madrid and ICAA, among others, will be present at the prestigious Annecy International Animation Film Festival. The Spanish projects Latente by Carlos Zaragoza and Aurora Jiménez, El último spitfire by Renato Roldán and the Colombian LIMBO by Daniel Shambo were awarded prizes by the jury last February. The trio of winning works, which received €8,000 in development aid, three months of mentoring, a travel grant and accreditation for a representative of the work, will be presented at the French festival Annecy MIFA 2023, an international benchmark in the industry.
The jury formed by Susanna Khachatryan, Marc Aguesse, Dune Blanco and Dan Franke also awarded a special mention to Manolitos by Diego Porral and Joaquín Garralda, so the series project will also be presented in this space.
These winning projects will present their project in the Next Lab Generation space at the prestigious festival, on Friday June 16th at 11:00h in the Haendel Room at the Imperial Palace. They will also talk about their experience at the workshop, about the creative process of introducing technologies such as VR and videogame engines for the prototyping of their teaser. The presentation will also include the participation of José Luis Farias, director of Next Lab Generation, who will share with the professionals attending the festival the data from the last edition and the future of this workshop that deals with the different challenges and opportunities offered by the incorporation of new technological tools in the production of animation and video games.
At this year's Annecy, a significant percentage of the projects selected were participants in Next Lab Generation. The short film Cuidadoras by Ecuadorian Daniela Cuenca, one of the finalists of Next Lab Generation 2023, will also attend the French festival thanks to its selection in the Mifa Pitches Short Films. The project stars several Latin American immigrant women, who share their anecdotes about their lives as caregivers for the elderly in Spain and how over time they created a network that allows them to help other women in a similar situation.
Fabiola Rosso's Nerea (Dominican Republic, Spain), another of the projects selected for the recent edition of the workshop, will also attend the event thanks to its selection in the "Stories for Women" section. The series project tells the story of a 13-year-old girl who discovers she belongs to a magical species called Nereids, nymphs of the sea who, through marine energy, take care of all living organisms found on earth. Stories for Women is focused on providing opportunities for African, Asia-Pacific Islander and Latin American women entertainers who want to tell their authentic stories. The programme is sponsored by the Walt Disney Company, with additional support from Sony Pictures Entertainment.
After three editions of Next Lab Generation, almost 50 projects have taken part in the workshop and received advice on how to apply disruptive technologies to their production processes. Titan Tofu and Lumen, two Spanish projects from the first and second editions respectively, will also have a space at Annecy and will seek funding at the MIFA Pitches. The short film project Lumen by Enric Sant, repeats in the festival as it was one of the winners in the 2022 edition and this time it will be presented in Mifa Pitches Digital Experiences. For its part, Titan Tofu is a transmedia series project by María Luquero which, after its passage through Next Lab Generation in 2021, has continued its journey with milestones such as its selection in the second edition of CIMA IMPULSA and is selected for Annecy 2023 in Mifa Pitches Series.
It will also be present at the IBERMEDIA NEXT festival, the new line of support promoted by the Ibermedia Programme in alliance with the Quirino Awards and La Liga de la Animación Iberoamericana, whose presentation took place last February as part of the Next Lab Generation event programme. Aimed at hosting pilot projects that support productions other than those traditionally supported by the Programme, the call is focused on the application of new technologies in the field of digital animation and audiovisual content with a high percentage of animation. On Thursday June 15th at 17:15h at the Salle Verdi there will be a conference in which attendees can learn more about the line of aid and its details. As a novelty this year, on June 13th, 14th and 15th from 9:00h to 10:00h in the morning will be the "Tech breakfast", two of them sponsored by IBERMEDIA NEXT. These meetings will take place in the Brasserie space of the Imperial Palace and attendance will be by invitation only until full capacity is reached.
Next Lab Generation 2023 is sponsored by the Community of Madrid through the Council for Culture, Tourism, and Sport as a main sponsor, with financial support from the Institute for Cinematography and Audiovisual Arts (ICAA), as part of the Recovery, Transformation, and Resilience Plan advanced by the European Union, the participation of the Ministry of Culture, DeAPlaneta Entertainment, and the Municipal Government of Madrid, and collaboration from Enisa, Annecy Festival and Weird Market.