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The annual mega-animation festival is happening in a few weeks, and we're here to help guide you through it.

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Benjamin Renner will take 'The Big Bad Fox' from the page to the screen.

The Oscar-nominated French animated feature "Ernest & Celestine," which is being rolled out theatrically across the U.S. over the next few months, has its first significant expansion this weekend.

The Cesars, the French equivalent of the Oscars, were handed out on Friday evening. The sole prize for animated film (shorts and features are combined into a single category) was presented to the feature film Ernest and Celestine, directed by Benjamin Renner, Vincent Patar, and Stéphane Aubier.

Good news for Americans: distributor GKIDS has picked up the film for U.S. distribution and is prepping a fall 2013 release. Every clip I’ve seen from the film makes it appear sweet and charming in the best way possible.

A funny thing has happened: as hand-drawn studio-produced animated features have all but disappeared from the American animation scene, European and Asian studios are enjoying a mini-renaissance of drawn feature films. The latest example is Ernest et Célestine, adapted from a French children’s book series about the unlikely friendship between a gruff bear with artistic ambitions and an intelligent mouse who doesn’t want to become a dentist. The clip above gives a taste of the film’s breezy visual style that mixes broken-line characters with watercolor-style backgrounds.

Directors are Benjamin Renner, Stéphane Aubier, Vincent Patar, the latter two of whom directed the recent stop-motion feature A Town Called Panic. The 80-minute feature is a co-production between France (Les Armateurs, Maybe Movies, Studiocanal France), Belgium (La Parti) and Luxembourg (Mélusine Productions). Ernest et Célestine will have its world premiere this week at the Directors’ Fortnight, which takes place alongside the Cannes Film Festival.

Another extended film clip as well as a video showing the paperless production pipeline can be viewed after the jump. It’s all in French, but don’t let that stop you from taking a peek.

Cartoon Brew | Permalink | No comment | Post tags: Belgium, Benjamin Renner, Ernest et Célestine, France, Luxembourg, Stéphane Aubier, Vincent Patar