Japan‘s presence at the 2026 Annecy Animation Festival marks a recent high-water mark, with 25 Japanese films selected across the festival’s competitive and non-competitive sections – up from 18 last year – as the country’s industry bodies simultaneously consolidate their MIFA footprint under a unified booth structure.
Three booths that previously operated separately have been brought together for this edition: the Japan Booth, run by UniJapan; VIPO; and the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, with the Agency for Cultural Affairs providing overarching leadership of the combined effort. The consolidation is designed to allow Japan to present a strong, collective front to international partners at the market.
Japan’s 25 Annecy selections span almost every section of the festival’s program. In the main Features competition, Kadowaki Kohei’s “We Are Aliens” – a Japan-France co-production – vies for the top prize. The Contrechamp section carries four Japanese titles: Shinomiya Yoshitoshi’s France co-production “A New Dawn”; Kuji Goro’s “Peleliu: Guernica of Paradise”; Takahashi Wataru’s “The Obsessed”; and Christopher Sullivan’s Japan-U.S. co-production “The Orbit of Minor Satellites.”
Four Japanese films screen in the Annecy Presents section: Hirota Yusuke’s “Chimney Town: Frozen in Time,” Taniguchi Goro’s “Paris ni Saku Étoile,” Ito Tomohiko’s “The Keeper of the Camphor Tree,” and Igarashi Yuki’s “The Ribbon Hero.” Kutsuna Kenichi’s “Sekiro: No Defeat” appears in Midnight Specials, while works-in-progress include Kuribayashi Kazuaki’s “Killtube” and “Monkey Quest,” directed by David N. Weiss as a Japan-U.S. project.
