Yoko Kuno: Last News

Ben Croll Specialty distributor Gkids has picked up North American rights to directors Yoko Kuno and Nobuhiro Yamashita’s upcoming animated feature “Ghost Cat Anzu,” while Paris-based Charades has boarded the project for international sales.  Spearheaded by Miyu Productions and Shin-Ei Animation, and adapted from a manga by Takashi Imashiro, the family title tracks the tempestuous friendship shared between 11-year Karin, a strong-minded girl sent to live with her monk granddad in the Japanese countryside, and Anzu, the even-more unpredictable phantom feline who acts as her guardian. The project will screen as a work-in-progress presentation at this year’s Annecy Animation Festival, and is slated for release in 2024.

The Annecy International Animation Film Festival has unveiled the line-up for its 2024 edition, running from June 9 to 15. (scroll down for full list of titles and events)

John Hopewell Chief International CorrespondentIn a departure, Japan’s Shin-Ei Animation, the studio behind two of the biggest anime TV franchises ever, “Doraemon” and “Crayon Shin-chan,” is teaming with France’s Miyu Productions to co-produce “Ghost Cat Anzu,” an auteurist animated feature film.Directed by Japan’s Nobuhiro Yamashita and Yoko Kuno, “Ghost Cat Anzu” also marks the latest expansive move by Miyu, a major French force for years in graduate and professional short film production and distribution – “Inés” was a standout at last year’s Annecy – which is moving ever more forcefully into feature films, as a producer and sales agent.Adapting the manga by Takashi Imashiro, “Ghost Cat Anzu” turns on Karin, 11, left by her father at