Top Titles Not to Missed From Annecy’s Portugal Tribute

As ever more Portuguese directors plan their first animated feature, Annecy is staging a timely Tribute to Portuguese Animation, its 2024 Country of Honor, with a seven section spread of key titles.   

Variety has made its own selection of that selection, profiling modern milestones such as Abi Feijo’s “The Outlaws” and José Miguel Ribeiro’s “The Suspect” and taking in Regina Pessoa’s “Uncle Thomas, Accounting for the Days,” the dazzling 2D of BAP, Zagreb Animafest winner “The Garbage Man” and Oscar-nominated ‘Ice Merchants.” 

There’s a larger narrative to the titles: the step-by-step and very often collaborative growth of a craft industry of social point and high artistic ambition prized at home and ever more abroad. 

As multiple leading lights of the Portugal’s animation industry contemplate feature film creation, Annecy’s Tribute is a reminder of what Portugal has already achieved. 

Some highlights: 

“Ice Merchants,” (João Gonzalez, 2022)

Portugal’s first ever Oscar nominee, in any category. Every day a father and son parachute from a rickety house suspended by pulleys above the vertigo-inducing abyss of an icy cliff in order to sell ice to a village thousands of feet below. Painterly in palette and superbly scored by Gonzalez from the sound of creaking ropes to his music, an edge-of-the -eat thriller whose real triumph is its heartrending tale of loss and the saving grace of…