Oct 20, 2024

Memories of a Snail” beat out live-action films to win top prize at the BFI London Film Festival.

Adam Elliott's “Memoir of a Snail,” which was in the official competition for Best Film at the 68th BFI London Film Festival in London today, won the Best Film Award over 10 live action films.

This is the first time since the BFI London created the Best Film Award in 2009 that an animated feature film has won. However, in 2007, the BFI's previous top prize, the Sutherland Trophy, was also won by an animated feature film (Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud's “Persepolis”).

Opening in U.S. theaters next weekend is the Australian indie animated feature “Snail Memory,” the story of Grace Pudell, a book-loving snail collector who falls into a series of misfortunes after being separated from her twin brother Gilbert in 1970s Australia. Audiences familiar with Elliott's body of work (“Harvey Clampett” and “Mary and Max”) will know the eccentricities to expect from this film.

The BFI Main Competition jury, consisting of Alexandre O. Philippe (director of “78/52 Hitchcock's Shower Scene”), Manoli Ravindran, and Reynaldo Marcus Green, had this to say about why they gave Elliott the top prize: “The film is a real treat. Emotionally resonant and constantly surprising, “Memoirs” tackles pertinent issues such as bullying, loneliness and grief head-on, creating an important and universal dialogue in a way only animation can. The jury was pleased that an animated film was recognized alongside a live-action film.

Elliott also stated in his acceptance speech.

Eight years ago, when we started making our little lump of a film, we could not have imagined how audiences around the world would connect and engage with our character, Grace Pudell. This film was made by many wonderful artists who worked very long days, months and years to bring our lump of clay to life. This award is for them. To win the Best Film award amongst all the great work from around the world shows that stop-motion animation is alive and well and is not a genre, but a wonderful medium and means to tell powerful and universal stories that can make audiences laugh and cry, BFI, BFI would like to thank the jury and the London audience for their support of our eccentric film.

Animation was also screened in other categories, including the BFI's Sutherland Award (now Best Feature Film). Olivia & Las Nubes (Olivia and the Clouds), an animated feature from the Dominican Republic directed by Tomas Pichardo Espaillat, won a special award in the same category, with the jury describing the film as “a brilliant exploration of various animation styles that playfully blurs the line between memory and reality in a A kaleidoscopic feast for the eyes and ears that playfully blurs the line between memory and reality while masterfully exploring a variety of animation styles.

In the Short Film Competition, Lisa Ott's LGBTQ+ short Dragfox won the Special Jury Prize. Starring Ian McKellen, the film was described by the jury as “an amazingly moving and impressive stop-motion animated musical that melted our hearts in just eight minutes.” The jury added that “not a single frame was wasted.