#Hayao Miyazaki’s ‘The Boy and the Heron’ to Open Animation Is Film Festival

Hayao Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron from Studio Ghibli will open the 6th edition of the Animation is Film Festival, which will run Oct. 18-22 in Hollywood. And the closing night will mark the Los Angeles premiere of Aardman’s Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget.

Presented by Netflix, Dawn of the Nugget will be followed by a conversation with its Oscar-nominated director, Sam Fell; and executive producer, Oscar-nominated director of 2000’s Chicken Run, and Aardman co-founder Peter Lord.

The competition line-up includes a pair of Annecy International Animation Film Festival prize winners, Neon’s Robot Dreams and GKIDS’ Chicken for Linda!, which will make their West Coast and U.S. debuts, respectively. The feature competition lineup is rounded out by Art College 1994, The Concierge, Mars Express, Phoenix: Reminiscence of Flower, Sirocco and the Kingdom of the Winds and The Summer.

In celebration of Walt Disney Animation Studio’s 100th anniversary, Disney will present a screening and panel of the studio’s upcoming short Once Upon a Studio, which features voices from Disney Animation’s past, including Dwayne Johnson, Paige O’Hara, Jodi Benson and Josh Gad. Disney will additionally screen early footage of Wish, its Nov. 22 release that will tell how the wishing star that so many Disney characters have wished upon came to be. The voice cast is led by Ariana DeBose and Chris Pine.

The Animation is Film festival will also celebrate Warner Bros. Animation’s centennial, according to Thursday’s announcement. Also during the festival, Dreamworks Animation will host a presentation of its latest feature, Trolls Band Together. Sony Pictures Animation/Sony Pictures Imageworks will present the North American Premiere of The Spider Within: A Spider-Verse Story, a new Spider-Verse short.

“‘Animation Is Film’ is not just the name of our festival, it is its mission,” said festival executive director Matt Kaszanek. “New films from Studio Ghibli and Aardman are seismic cinematic events, and a reason for movie lovers of any medium to rejoice. Joining these titles is a collection of some of the most audacious, genre-defying, and critically acclaimed films of the year.”