Preschool Fare, Short Docs Stand Out at Annecy MIFA TV Pitch

variety.com:

Ben Croll Preschool fare and short-form docs ruled the roost at this year’s MIFA TV pitch session, with more than half the projects boasting episodes running under eight minutes in length, and nearly just as many titles aimed at the under-five crowd.Of the nine projects pitched, the preschool series “Yukon: The Space Botanist” (pictured) received the most vocal reception, drawing hearty laughs from a room full of buyers and commissioning editors at least three decades older than the show’s intended audience.

Produced by Norway’s Imaginær Film, the 3D animated series gives computer graphics a tactile polish, featuring characters surfaced to resemble plastic figurines and background full of physical elements scanned in.

Described as “three good friends floating around in their own corner of the universe,” the show follows Yukon, a human botanist travelling the galaxy to collect rare seeds; Stretch, a fast-talking earthworm turned problem solver; and Bo, a living, breathing planet upon which the other two reside.

Employing a playful sense of humor reminiscent of Douglas Adams, the project has clear commercial appeal.On the artistic side, the MIFA pitch prizes amplified both the doc and preschool trends, with two of the four TV pitch prizes going to short-form docs “Jupiter’s Cogitations” from director Moumouni ‘Jupiter’ Sodré, and “Grandpa and Grandma’s Revolution,” from Agnès Patron and Sophie Nivelle-Cardinale.