Cartoon D'Or Award Suppressed in Favor of European Animation Awards

ZF Team 27 June 2017

From left to right: Alessandro Rak (jury member, MAD Entertainment), Mrs Dominique Salomon (Vice President in charge of Culture and Heritage, Occitanie / Pyrénées-Méditerranée Region), Gabriel Harel (director of Yùl and the Snake), Mark Burton (jury member, Aardman Animations), Amaury Ovise (producer of Yùl and the Snake), Clément Calvet (jury member, Superprod) & Christophe Erbes (moderator) (c) CARTOON

It seems to have been the result of long gestation and talks.

The CARTOON D'OR Award (established in 1991) was designed to be a pan-European award for animation short films, recognizing each year only prize-winning films from a selection of partner festivals.

Past recipients include Nick Park, Mark Baker, Michaël Dudok de Wit, Sylvain Chomet, Jacques-Rémy Girerd, Joanna Quinn, Benjamin Renner, Stéphane Aubier, and Vincent Patar. The 2016 winner was Gabriel Harel for Yul and the Snake.

However, the announcement of the new European Animation Awards (EAA), an initiative led by Didier Brunner and Jean-Paul Commin, with Peter Lord as its president, was also intended to cover similar ground in terms of awards.

The new Émile awards include separate competition categories for Best European Animated Short Film (in a total of 16 categories overall).

As Cartoon Director Marc Vandeweyer says, there would be no sense in having two different European Awards for the best animated short film, and it is better to group all the European awards on the same evening.

CARTOON will support the new initiative, whose first ceremony takes place Friday 8th December 2017 in Lille, France.