Apr 13, 2016

Long Way North Wins Japan Feature Film Award

The crew of the Flash-animated feature Long Way North traveled to Japan last month to accept the Tokyo Anime Award Festival grand prize for animated feature. The French-Danish co-production won this recognition from among 24 animated feature submissions, a significantly more competitive field than the Academy Awards, which had only 16 submissions in its feature category last year.

Below is a video of jury member Ryuichi Yagi, director of the Japanese hit Stand by Me Doraemon, presenting the award to the Long Way North team.

Liane-Cho Han, the animation supervisor of Long Way North, shared a few photos from the crew's trip to Japan. He was especially delighted to meet Japanese animation luminary Toshiyuki Inoue (pictured below), who reportedly loved Long Way North and watched the film three times.

A private screening of Long Way North was also arranged for the Tokyo animation community at Cinema Laputa. Among the artists who attended were Toshiyuki Inoue, Iso Mitsuo, Christophe Ferreira, Thomas Romain, Yasuhiro Irie, Yoshiharu Ashino, and Abel Gongora. A presentation about the film's making followed the screening, as well as a Q&A session.

An additional private screening of the film was also arranged at Studio Ghibli, with the presence of Isao Takahata, Studio Chizu co-founder Yuchiro Saito, and Sunao Katabuchi (Mai Mai Miracle, Princess Arete), among other industry figures.

Long Way North has won numerous awards on the festival circuit and has attracted the attention of industry artists, yet struggled to find a theatrical audience in its native France when it launched last January, a similar fate shared by the unconventional French feature, April and the Extraordinary World. The good news for Americans is that Long Way North will be distributed in the United States in fall 2016 through Shout Factory. Read our conversation with the film's director Rémi Chayé: