The Violinist becomes first Singapore animated feature to compete at Annecy film festival

The Violinist has been selected for the main competition at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival 2026, making it the first Singapore-produced animated feature to receive this honour in the festival’s 65-year history.

Singaporean Ervin Han and Spanish animator Raul Garcia directed the hand-drawn story set against the backdrop of colonial Singapore, the Japanese Occupation and the decades that follow, and the movie is produced by Singapore’s Robot Playground Media, Spain’s TV ON Producciones and Italy’s Altri Occhi.

It is supported by Singapore’s Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA), with other public institutions and broadcasters from all three countries.

In a press statement, Han says: “This project has taken more than a decade – to have The Violinist selected for Annecy’s main competition is incredibly meaningful.”

In 2026, the festival, held in Annecy, an Alpine town in south-eastern France, runs from June 21 to 27.

The Violinist’s story begins before World War II and follows Fei, a violinist from a Peranakan family, and her close friend Kai. After the Japanese invasion of Singapore in 1941, Kai joins the resistance, but disappears after the war. Fei spends decades performing around the region while searching for her missing friend. Her journey is marked by grief, and also hope.

Singapore actors voicing the characters include Tan Kheng Hua, Adrian Pang, Ayden Sng and Fang Rong.

Music is central to the story, with an original score by Golden Horse Award-winning Singaporean composer Ricky Ho, featuring lead violin performances by Singaporean violinist Joy Yong.

Han, the co-director, co-writer and creator of the original story, explains why The Violinist had such a long development process.

“There’s no precedent – Singapore does not have an animated film industry. Development took more than three years, as we had to find the story, do research, then the writing. The Covid-19 pandemic impacted progress too. It also took time to structure such a complex international co-production,” he says.

Executive producer Justin Deimen says international producers had never seen anything like this – a Singapore-led animation co-production of this scale – and so had to be persuaded to come on board.

“Aligning European funding partners – who each have their own structures and national priorities – around a distinctly Singaporean story required time and careful structuring,” he adds. But they were eventually won over by “the universality of the story and (its) deep humanism”.

Ms Yvonne Tang, assistant chief executive of IMDA’s Media Industry Group, describes the selection as a milestone for Singapore’s animation industry.

“After nearly a decade in the making, The Violinist’s unprecedented selection for Annecy marks a significant milestone in the storytelling journeys of Singapore’s animation talent. This is a proud moment for Singapore’s animation industry.”

The Annecy International Animation Film Festival was founded in June 1960 in Annecy, making it the world’s oldest and largest dedicated animation festival. It is widely referred to as the “Cannes of animation” and is considered the foremost competitive event in the field. The top prize, the Annecy Cristal, is regarded as the equivalent of the Cannes’ Palme d’Or for animated film.

Over the years, various Singapore-led teams have had works selected for Annecy, mostly in the short, experimental and television animation sections.

In 2016, the experimental short The Great Escape by Singaporean film-maker Tan Wei Keong competed in the Animation Off-Limits section. In 2025, the horror-comedy series Zombie Safari, produced for Mediacorp, was selected for the TV Films category. The same year, the dark comedy short My Wonderful Life, directed by Calleen Koh and produced by Tan Si En from Singapore, screened in Annecy’s Official Shorts Competition, the festival’s main competitive strand for short films.

The festival favours arthouse works and films not from the major studios. In 2024, the Latvian dystopian adventure film Flow (2024) won four prizes, including the jury award and the audience award, at the festival, before going on to win Best Animated Feature at the 2025 Academy Awards and Golden Globes.

The Violinist is based on Robot Playground Media’s award-winning short film The Violin (2015), produced as part of the Singapore Memory Project, a national memory-capturing effort to mark the 50th anniversary of Singapore’s independence.

Han says The Violinist will travel across the global festival circuit in 2026 before its release in Singapore in the latter half of the year.