Xilam Group Heads Back to Annecy Festival with Growing Film and Series Slate
Xilam Animation (Paris:XIL), Academy Award ® -nominated French animation studio, is returning to Annecy International Animation Film Festival – taking place on 8 th - 14 th June 2025 – with a wave of activity across its latest features and series. Upcoming ambitious family feature Lucy Lost is part of Annecy's official 'Work In Progress' sessions, which offer first looks at features and series in production, with Xilam's Founder and CEO Marc du Pontavice participating alongside key creatives including director and co-writer Olivier Clert (Klaus, Little Prince). Xilam is also showcasing new original titles across its burgeoning slate during the festival, including Submarine Jim, Piggy Builders and Turbo Twins.
Xilam's raft of Annecy activity follows the recently announced partnership with commercial French broadcaster TF1 to develop Turbo Twins, a new comedy action CG animation series for kids aged 6-10 years old.
Marc du Pontavice, Founder and CEO at Xilam Animation, said: ' As we return to one of the key events in our calendar, our line-up for Annecy once again offers something for everyone in the family – from epic film adventures to vibrant comedy series. We look forward to unveiling a first glimpse into our moving and powerful film Lucy Lost, and to also presenting our diverse slate of new kids' series, which blends both original ideas as well as beloved IPs. Our flourishing development and production pipeline is testament to the leading creativity of our talent, and also to the strength of our relationships with key European broadcasters, such as France Télévisions, TF1, BBC, Super RTL and ZDF. '
Full details of Xilam's activity in Annecy includes:
LUCY LOST >> Work-In Progress Session, 2:30pm on Tuesday 10 th June (Salle Pierre Lamy)
Upcoming epic family feature film Lucy Lost, based on award-winning author and previous British Children's Laureate Michael Morpurgo's 2014 novel Listen to the Moon, is screening as part of Annecy's Work In Progress sessions with an exclusive first look at the film. Produced by Xilam Films, the session will bring together creatives including Marc du Pontavice, CEO and Founder at Xilam, director Olivier Clert, artistic director Joyse Colson, first assistant Lucie Giros and Head of Posing Juliette Laurent. Goodfellas Animation is handling international sales, with Le Pacte distributing the feature theatrically in France and French broadcasters Canal+ and Cine+ have the pay-TV rights
Synopsis: Despite her family's love and affection, Lucy has always felt like an outsider. Her extraordinary gifts and striking white hair set her apart, stirring hostility and distrust in her village. With the help of Milly – a little girl only she can see – Lucy embarks on a daring adventure to unravel the mystery of her powers and finally find where she belongs.
SUBMARINE JIM >> First Episodes Now Available
Xilam is bringing new adventure comedy Submarine Jim to Annecy, with the first episodes of the 2D animated series now available to view. European broadcasters France Télévisions (France) and Super RTL (France) are already on board the series, which delves into the tale of a naive, young dolphin named Jim, who when tasked with steering the world's first-ever submarine on wheels, leads a motley crew of underwater friends on a whirlwind journey across land and sea.
PIGGY BUILDERS >> Premiering in Upcoming Trimester
Originally commissioned by France Télévisions (France), BBC (UK) and ZDF (Germany), Piggy Builders follows Cornelia, Cesar and Charlie, charismatic siblings with curly tails, as they embark on their passion for construction, every day. They share a deep love for building, problem solving and their wonderful community in Fine Forest. There's one more thing they have in common: they all have a lot to learn about working together. When they manage to work as a team, the impossible becomes possible! The series is set to be completed by the end of the year, with its premiere set for the upcoming trimester.
TURBO TWINS >> Development Agreement with TF1
Xilam has recently inked a partnership with commercial French broadcaster TF1 to develop new comedy action CG animation series Turbo Twins. First pitched by Xilam Group at Cartoon Forum 2022, the series is aimed at kids aged 6-10 years old and will air in TF1's leading children's slot TFOU. The series is set in Karston Speedway Summer Camp – the ultimate summer showdown for the fastest K.A.R. racers. The stakes have never been higher: for the winners, it's a place at the Nationals. For the losers, it's elimination and they go home with nothing. But for our incredible teen duo, the Turbo Twins, losing is clearly not an option. And when high-octane racing meets summer camp life, buckle up! Think workouts that turn into laugh-offs; home-made contraptions and tactics that run out of control, and rivalries that burn just as hot in the canteen as they do on the tarmac – it's never going to be an easy ride!
About Xilam
A major player in animation, Xilam is an integrated studio founded in 1999 that creates, produces and distributes original programmes in more than 190 countries for both children and adult audiences. Xilam content is broadcast on television, and is also available on SVoD platforms including Netflix, Disney+, Amazon and AVoD streaming platforms including YouTube and Facebook.
With its creativity and capacity for innovation recognised worldwide, its unique expertise in CGI, as well as editorial and commercial expertise at the cutting edge of its industry, Xilam is positioned as a key player of the market. Each year, Xilam builds real successes and capitalises on its powerful historical brands including Oggy and the Cockroaches, Zig & Sharko and Chicky, as well as new properties such as Oggy Oggy for a preschool audience, Mr Magoo and Karate Sheep, and Academy Award ® nominated adult feature film I Lost My Body. Additionally, Xilam is serving as the animation studio for Zack Snyder's animated series Twilight of the Gods, launched worldwide on 19 September 2024 by Netflix, and also produces Chip 'n' Dale: Park Life, alongside the forthcoming horror comedy The Doomies, for Disney+. Xilam's expanding and strong catalogue now consists of over 2,800 episodes and three feature films.
Xilam employs more than 400 individuals, across its studios in Paris, Angoulême in France and Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam. Xilam was ranked France's leading animation studio for the 2018-2023 period in a report by the French National Centre for Cinema and Animation (CNC).
Xilam is listed on Euronext Paris Compartment C - PEA - SRD long Eligibility.
ISIN: FR0004034072, Symbol: XIL
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
San Francisco Chronicle
40 minutes ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
One of S.F.'s most anticipated restaurants is about to open
Once a common snack in Hong Kong, the gold coin — a skewer of stacked chicken liver and pork lard, glazed in char siu sauce and roasted — is going extinct. A rich, fatty treat composed of cast-off cuts, it was known as a proletariat dish. As diners' preferences changed, many Hong Kong restaurants stopped making it. But in San Francisco, chef James Yeun Leong Parry will revive it at his much-anticipated modern Chinese restaurant, the Happy Crane, opening Aug. 8 at 451 Gough St. His golden coin will look different: chicken liver mousse and thin slices of melty, slow-cooked coppa perched atop a house-made bao with pickled ginger and chives. 'A lot of my inspiration comes from humble ingredients or humble dishes and those techniques, I feel, are dying,' Parry said. Parry, a fine dining chef known for his popular Happy Crane popup, hopes to at once preserve traditional Chinese foodways, and interpret them for a new generation. Born in England but raised in Hong Kong, Parry went on to work at Corey Lee's three-Michelin-star Benu in San Francisco, as well as Michelin-starred restaurants in Hong Kong. The Happy Crane is equipped with a hulking, super-hot duck oven to prepare whole Peking-style birds. A stone mill will be used to grind fresh rice for cheung fun, or rice noodle rolls. Parry added a wok station to the kitchen of the prominent corner space in Hayes Valley, last occupied by Lee's French bistro Monsieur Benjamin. The menu is a la carte, though diners can opt for a $120 chef's choice dinner. Dim sum favorites like firecracker shrimp and fish-stuffed eggplant take on new forms and flavors here, the latter topped with sweet uni and Worcestershire sauce (a nod to Parry's birthplace). Braised beef shins ($19) are paired with confit artichokes, sliced to mimic the appearance of beef tendons, and an aromatic sauce made from a master stock. The rice roll ($33), which Parry said has a 'gelatinous' mouthfeel thanks to the fresh-milled rice, comes with crab and a sauce made from crab shells, butter, and shaoxing wine. The craft of siu mei, or roasted meats, is a passion of Parry's. At popups, he made char siu with pork jowl, a cut of meat more common in Hong Kong than the Bay Area, which will continue at the restaurant. The whole ducks, available by pre-order ($110), come with housemade pancakes and tian mian jiang, a thick, fermented sauce that Parry elevates with pluot juice. Parry also plans to apply the techniques of Cantonese duck to roasted Wolfe Ranch quail with lacquered skin ($41). And crispy pork belly ($45), siu yuk, gets its turn in the ripping-hot duck oven. 'Basically, it's several steps of burning the skin to get that crispy, charred flavor,' Parry said. The pork belly is finished on a Japanese charcoal grill and served with a miso hot mustard, choy sum and tomato relish. 'Particularly here in the West where labor is really tough, these traditional elements, because they're very time-consuming and very specific in terms of the craft, people are trying to find shortcuts,' said Parry. 'I understand it economically, but as a craft, I think it's really important to preserve.' Desserts pull on childhood nostalgia: seasonal frozen yogurt, which Parry grew up eating in Hong Kong, and mochi balls that channel the chocolate-hazelnut flavor of Ferrero Rocher, a typical Chinese New Year gift. Parry and Happy Crane bar manager Carolyn Kao (previously of top spots True Laurel and Good Good Culture Club in San Francisco and Oakland bar Viridian) brought in Kevin Diedrich of famed San Francisco bar Pacific Cocktail Haven to develop drinks. They play with Chinese ingredients like lychee, red bean and five-spice throughout the menu. The Rosy Dawn, one of the first cocktails recorded in Hong Kong by writer Charles H. Baker, mixes gin with jasmine, coconut-fig leaf-rhubarb cordial and cherry liqueur. Diedrich reinterpreted Pacific Cocktail Haven's popular gimlet for the Happy Crane with sakura tea, a cordial made from Japanese citrus, and dried tangerine peel bitters, a traditional Chinese seasoning. Nonalcoholic drinks and Chinese teas will also be available. General manager and advanced sommelier Justin Chin, who previously worked at San Francisco fine-dining restaurants Gary Danko, Spruce, Ju-Ni and Hina Yakitori, developed the wine list. It's largely focused on Champagne, German Riesling and Burgundy. Wines by the glass range from $16 to $37 for high-end Champagne. 'I think a lot of people think of wine as an afterthought with Chinese food,' said Chin, a San Francisco native who grew up visiting family in Hong Kong.' I think it's appropriate to showcase that wines at this level can match the food, or vice versa.' The Gough Street building with dramatic floor-to-ceiling windows has been transformed into a warm, open space filled with personal touches. Two stone mythical creature statues, given to Parry by his uncle as symbols of protection and prosperity, flank the front doors. Banquettes are made from English tweed. Parry's sister, Yolande, painted artwork in the moody bathroom and illustrations for the cocktail menu. The heart of the dining room is a 14-seat wraparound bar covered in wavy, textured layers of plaster, meant to evoke a style of traditional Chinese landscape painting. Dishes will be served on bowls and plates made by a Taiwanese artist and a local ceramicist. A large floral paper lantern hangs over a 12-seat private dining room, which will be used for general reservations when it's not booked. The Happy Crane adds to a wave of next -generation Chinese restaurants. Chef-owner Brandon Jew is often credited with leading the charge when he opened Mister Jiu's in San Francisco in 2016. Two alumni of the Chinatown Michelin-starred restaurant are now running nationally acclaimed newcomer Four Kings. The genre, Parry said, is 'starting to wake up and gather momentum with these modern versions of Chinese cuisine through different people's lenses.' The Happy Crane. Opening Aug. 8. 5-9 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday. 451 Gough St., San Francisco.
San Francisco Chronicle
40 minutes ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
This Michelin-starred S.F. restaurant's quirky format made it famous. Now it's just distracting
For one glorious summer, my grandma bought season passes to Universal Studios Hollywood for my cousins and me. I became close associates with the 'E.T.' — nice guy — and visited every attraction multiple times. But that much exposure to a good thing brings downsides: The surprises of the grounds tour no longer moved me, the 'Back to the Future' ride became a high-tech arcade game. The illusion was shattered. More recently in San Francisco, I've felt a similar shift at State Bird Provisions. When it opened on New Year's Eve in 2011, State Bird set a new standard of creativity for Bay Area restaurants. Chefs Nicole Krasinski and Stuart Brioza introduced a novel dim sum-style presentation of small plates, emulsifying California's bounty with French, Italian, Japanese and Chinese flavors and technique. It earned State Bird nearly every national honor: Bon Appétit's Best New Restaurant in America, multiple James Beard awards, a Michelin star. The staff, carrying trays or pushing carts, pirouette through the dining room, tempting tables with tiny salads, gleaming riblets and potato chips with aerated dip. Steamy siu mai? Not in this building. This spirited exhibition was fun and endearing on my first visit. Now, it's my least favorite thing about the restaurant. Extra! Extra! San Francisco Chronicle critics MacKenzie Chung Fegan and Cesar Hernandez are dueling this week over one restaurant: State Bird Provisions. Don't miss Fegan's response on Friday — sign up for the Chronicle Food newsletter to make sure it lands in your inbox. The dim sum schtick feels more customary than essential, more cute than efficient, more showy than delicious. The dim sum plates can feel like a roller coaster on a day where the weather won't make up its mind; sunny and thrilling one moment, gray and dull the next. I gleefully gnawed on immaculate ribs, lacquered in a fiery, tart passion fruit sauce ($16), then puzzled over a bland wedge salad of yellowing golf ball-sized lettuces ($6). Avocados in Caesar dressing ($8), wearing a fuzzy fur coat of cheese curls, failed to delight like the cherries accompanied by a cloud of savory-sweet whipped cheese ($10). Egg tofu custard ($9)? Beautifully silky. But the burrata-capped garlic bread ($13) was dense enough to give your mandibles a workout. This aspect of the experience may be the initial draw, but it does not actually represent the restaurant's best efforts. Instead, State Bird's spoils are on the printed dinner menu. If the roving snacks are a jam session, built on and stymied by improvisation, the standard menu dishes are albums: expressive, precise, fleshed-out thoughts. Toothsome, hand-cut noodles ($30) come doused in a peppery pumpkin seed salsa macha, with an egg on top that melts into pudding. A treasure chest of a donabe ($30) contained chewy tofu cubes, ready-to-burst beans and springy mushrooms in a slightly viscous, unctuous green broth; each sip felt like a massage for my soul. The restaurant's namesake specialty is always on the dinner menu: juicy fried quail (half for $24) lording over lemony, stewed onions. These entrees are in the major leagues. The small plates are playing varsity. On one visit, I had my eye on roti with lentil hummus off the printed menu. But I abandoned that plot for a couple of dim sum bites with lower price tags. The next outing, I ordered the flaky flatbread, and I realized the gravity of my mistake. I was constantly in this conundrum of choice, where the implied ephemeral state of the dim sum compelled me to act fast or miss out like a loser. When I rejected the servers' edible propositions, I saw a flicker of defeat on their faces, and felt as though I was letting them down. Not to Penn & Teller the magic trick, but the appetizer scarcity is artificial, as you can order the dim sum items a la carte. In fact, there's a printed version of the menu, if you want to skip the tableside advertising and cherry-pick your snacks. The dining room — a veritable vortex of hors d'oeuvres — is constantly animated, if a bit chaotic. The cart and tray circulation contributes to the commotion. The lanes between tables are already tight, and traffic is stalled by servers giving neighboring tables their best Don Draper sales pitch. If you visit the facilities, be prepared to play human Tetris to get back your seat. The staff is well-informed on the menu, but their ample responsibilities can impact service: the occasional forgotten drink, a tardy entree, tables crowded with empty plates. While hordes of patrons no longer camp outside of State Bird, as they did for years, demand is still high. Prime time reservations evaporate swiftly. If you don't book weeks in advance, you're likely to only find slots past 8 p.m. Or you can try showing up early: The bar is reserved for walk-ins. I don't question State Bird's aptitude for brilliant cooking. I'm interested in seeing State Bird evolve. While the dim sum-style presentation brought the restaurant glory, today it seems to be an albatross, an inescapable presence, an unskippable ad. Noise level: Loud. Meal for two, without drinks: $75-$150 What to order: Fried quail (half for $24), pork ribs ($16) Drinks: Beer and wine. Exceptional house-made non-alcoholic drinks like shiso-yuzu soda ($9) and Raspberry Julius ($10). Best practices: Skip the dim sum-style plates. Instead, order a starter on the dinner menu like roti or pancakes and an entree like donabe or quail. Peanut milk ($4) is non-negotiable.
Tom's Guide
2 hours ago
- Tom's Guide
Netflix's new political thriller series looks like a seriously gripping binge-watch — here's the full trailer
Netflix has just released the full trailer for 'Hostage,' the much-anticipated political thriller arriving on August 21. Following earlier first-look images and a short intense teaser, the new trailer offers a deeper look at the series' central conflict, where risky diplomacy and personal relationships intersect. This full trailer intensifies the drama: when British Prime Minister Abigail Dalton's husband is kidnapped and French President Vivienne Toussaint is simultaneously blackmailed, both leaders face impossible choices in a tense power struggle that threatens their lives, careers, and nations. 'Hostage' stars and is executive produced by Suranne Jones, with Julie Delpy co-starring. The series was created by Matt Charman and directed by Isabelle Sieb and Amy Neil. At the start of the new trailer, Prime Minister Dalton's husband, Alex (Ashley Thomas), reassures her with the words, 'If it ever comes down to a choice, you'll make the right one.' Moments before a crucial summit with French President Toussaint (Deply), PM Dalton learns that her husband has been seized, and the kidnappers insist she step down from office if she wants him returned safely. The trailer then offers a preview of what follows, revealing a simultaneous blackmail scheme aimed at President Toussaint. Despite their stark political differences, Dalton and Toussaint must join forces under intense global scrutiny. Meanwhile, the prime minister and her team race to uncover the reasons behind this unexpected and alarming assault. Dalton's already fragile world is made even more complicated by her daughter's heartbreaking admission: if anything happens to her father, she'll never forgive her. Now, in addition to handling a national crisis and navigating political demands, Dalton is also grappling with a fractured family dynamic that threatens to pull her even further apart from her daughter. Get instant access to breaking news, the hottest reviews, great deals and helpful tips. Charman tells Netflix: 'I have always wanted to tell the story of the reality of living where you work as a prime minister and being torn between your family and your country.' Jones then added: 'She [Dalton] is put in such extreme circumstances, and we see that when push comes to shove she puts her country over her family. The original, working title for the series was The Choice, and that's why.' At the end of the trailer, Alex begs his masked captor, 'Please, we have families.' The kidnapper's reply: 'So did I.' This immediately hints at a personal loss or trauma that may have driven them to commit the kidnapping. Clearly, there's more going on beneath the surface. The full trailer reveals just enough to tease without spoiling (thankfully), leaving the complete story for when Netflix drops all five episodes of 'Hostage' on August 21. Follow Tom's Guide on Google News to get our up-to-date news, how-tos, and reviews in your feeds. Make sure to click the Follow button.
