‘Chicken for Linda!’ and ‘Robot Dreams’ Take Top Honors at Animation Is Film 2023

Bill Desowitz
·3 min read
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“Chicken for Linda!” (GKids), the French/Italian 2D comedy from the husband-and-wife animation team of Sébastien Laudenbach and Chiara Malta, won the Grand Jury Prize at the sixth annual Animation Is Film Festival. “Robot Dreams” (NEON), the bittersweet Spanish/French hand-drawn dramedy from Pablo Berger, earned the Special Jury Prize.

For the Shorts section, Tal Kantor’s “Letter to a Pig,” a mixed media short about a Holocaust survivor who writes a thank-you letter to a pig that saved his life, won the Grand Prize, and the Special Jury Prize went to “Wild Summon” (from Saul Freed and Karni Arieli), which follows the dramatic life cycle of the wild salmon in human form.

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The AIF win for “Chicken for Linda!” comes on the heels of taking the Annecy Cristal top prize. The film combines an imaginative hand-drawn style (color-coded characters with watercolor backgrounds) with a wacky premise concerning a frustrated widowed mom trying to catch a chicken to cook for her 8-year-old daughter after unjustly punishing her.

GKids plans to release “Chicken for Linda!” next year to concentrate on Hayao Miyazaki’s acclaimed “The Boy and the Heron” this season; that film opened the festival at the TCL Chinese Theater IMAX.

“Robot Dreams” (which took the Annecy Contrecham top prize) is an adaptation of Sarah Varon’s graphic novel about the friendship between a dog and a robot in New York’s East Village in the ’80s and the misfortune that ensues. Utilizing pantomime and densely populated world-building allowed Berger to lean on visuals the way he does in live action (“Blancanieves”). The festival recognition will provide a boost for this Oscar hopeful during a very crowded season.

A still from the animated movie "Robot Dreams" which premiered at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival.
“Robot Dreams”

Here’s the jury’s assessment of the two winners: “With ‘Chicken for Linda,’ Sébastien Laudenbach and Chiara Malta honor the challenges and rewards of being a single parent in a hectic world, employing a visually original artistic style through which lively brush strokes and daubs of color bring relatable human characters (and one very flustered chicken) to vibrant life.”

“In a poignant mix of humor and pathos, director Pablo Berger adapts Sara Varon’s graphic novel, showing how people and places shape our lives, while paying homage to New York City in the 1980s. That he conveys this through pantomime and animation, without using dialogue, is all the more remarkable.”

The feature jury, chaired by Peter Debruge (Variety’s chief film critic), included Marge Dean (head of Skybound’s animation studio and president of Women in Animation), Andrew Ruhemann (founder of Passion Pictures, Oscar-winning director of “The Lost Thing”), Charles Solomon (critic and historian), Nora Twomey (Oscar-nominated director of Cartoon Saloon’s “The Breadwinner”), and Ramin Zahed (Animation Magazine editor).

AIF is produced by GKids in partnership with the Annecy International Animation Festival.

Editor’s Note: Bill Desowitz, IndieWire Awards Editor, Craft & Animation, also served on the AIF feature jury.

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