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2014’s Boyhood took 12 years to make. Some of these films make Boyhood look like an episode of South Park.

14 ‘Kill It and Leave This Town’: 14 Years

Polish animator Mariusz Wilczyński set out to make a short animated film about a person whose entire family dies, so they run off to a land of memories where time doesn’t exist and everyone is alive. At some point, Wilczyński decided it should actually become a feature length psychological horror, which took just a smidge longer to animate.

13 ‘The Evil Within’: 15 Years

Writer/director Andrew Getty self-financed this horror film, which was based on his childhood nightmares, for about $6 million. He filmed his deepest fears inside his own mansion, toiled away for years on special effects, and died before he could finish. The producer had to do the final editing to get it across the finish line.

12 ‘Pakeezah’: 16 Years

The...

Nowadays, it is difficult to objectively choose which of the major animation studios — Ghibli, Disney, or Pixar — is currently the leading creative company. But, sometimes, especially where animation is concerned, bigger does not necessarily mean better. Kill It and Leave This Town, which was produced by a small studio and directed by Polish artist and filmmaker Mariusz Wilczyński, is a tour de force of adult fable, combining autobiographical storytelling with an enthralling animation technique.

Actress/supermodel Anja Rubik poses for the "Zara" Spring 2023 campaign, wearing cargo tops, heeled mules and a whole lot more:

"...since 2010, Rubik has made several appearances on 'Top Model', the Polish edition of 'America's Next Top Model'. In 2014, she became the host and a judge of the Polish version of the reality show 'Project Runway Poland'.

" In 2010, Rubik appeared as a judge in 'The Fashion Show', alongside Isaac Mizrahi, Iman and Laura Brown.

"In 2014, Rubik starred in a music video for the song 'Chleb' by Mister D., a music project of the Polish author Dorota Masłowska and film director Krzysztof Skonieczny.

"In 2014 Rubik appeared in the 'Black Atlass' music video to the 'Jewels' track, directed by Yoann Lemoine. In 2016, she starred in 'Lost Me', Mary Komasa's music video directed by Jan Komasa.

"In 2019, Rubik directed the music video to Mary Komasa's track 'Be a Boy'.

The animated film awards race this year once again features stellar family film offerings from the big studios as well as boutique powerhouses such as Cartoon Saloon and distributor GKids, but there are a handful of films found freedom in animation to tell adult-skewing, even personal stories, and even push the form to the limit.

Mariusz Wilczynski’s “Kill It and Leave This Town” explores despair and other dark parts of the human heart with animation that equals the edgy, gritty story, with cold blues, grays, muted reds — enhancing the black-ink-like animated characters and cityscapes that are confrontational and even ugly.

On the other style end of the spectrum is Yonfan’s “No. 7 Cherry Lane,” his memories of Hong Kong in 1967 during protests. It’s romantic, and beautiful.

“We did thousands of those realistic drawings of Hong Kong in pencil and charcoal on rice paper, but I would not call it photorealism,...

KilI It And Leave This Town is a deeply personal, unconventional and moving hand-drawn animation from artist-turned-animator Mariusz Wilczynski, who explores subjects including grief and childhood in his feature debut.

“I wouldn’t say it was biographical; it’s a tale based on emotions I had to deal with and things that happened in my life. It came from a deep feeling of sadness I was going through when my parents passed away,” Wilczynski says during the film’s panel at Contenders International. “I realized there was no tomorrow. I was left with a lot of remorse, unfinished conversations, and mistakes I wanted to make up for. This is what the film does.”

As we hear, the project began as a short film and, as it grew in the director’s head, underwent a remarkable 12-year journey to become a feature. “At some point the film outsmarted me,” says Wilczynski.

Deadline kicks off the New Year and movie awards season with our first edition of Contenders International, which gets underway this morning at 8 a.m. Pt. The event showcases 22 titles from 15 studios, streamers and distributors with presentations including clips and filmmaker/talent Q&As. In all, 19 of the films are official submissions to the Best International Film category at the 93rd Academy Awards.

Due to the pandemic Contenders International will be presented virtually, so click here to register and join the livestream. You can additionally follow along for the day on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram via @Deadline and #DeadlineContenders. See the full schedule of panels below.

While international markets have been a profit center for the studios for many years, local films have begun to take on greater importance outside festivals and indeed their home countries. That was particularly the case in 2019 with South Korea’s Parasite, which went on...

Stuck inside on Black Friday, stuffed with turkey, what are Americans supposed to do to distract themselves? All year, it’s been a battle of the streamers to fill the void left by cinemas, and this week finds nearly all the big brands are stepping up with big titles to serve the stay-at-home set.

Netflix debuts Oscar contender “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” in theaters this week — featuring a terrific final performance from Chadwick Boseman. The film won’t be available to subscribers until mid-December, though Netflix will serve up Kurt-and-Goldie holiday special “The Christmas Chronicles 2” — as well as “Dolly Parton’s Christmas on the Square.” Plus, “Hillbilly Elegy” hits the service this week, too, following a limited theatrical run.

For family audiences, Disney Plus launches a “Black Beauty” remake. (Those feeling courageous enough to visit theaters can give rival DreamWorks Animation a shot with a sequel to caveman cartoon “The Croods.

Mariusz Wilczyski’s Polish animation film and the documentary by Ukraine’s Iryna Tsilyk were declared joint winners of the Jaguar Al Este for best film. Undaunted by the havoc caused by Covid-19, the eleventh edition of the Al Este Central and Eastern European Film Festival, held in Peru, bowed out last Saturday for another year. The awards ceremony marked the end of an unusual festival experience, filled with special moments from start to finish. The award for best film (the recently unveiled Jaguar Al Este) was shared by the Polish animated film Kill It and Leave This Town, directed by Mariusz Wilczynski, and the Ukrainian documentary The Earth Is Blue as an Orange, by Iryna Tsilyk. Both films were given rave reviews by the Press Jury, which ultimately decided in Tsilyk’s favour for its best entry in the competition, with Wilczynski’s film receiving a special mention alongside the Hungarian drama Those.

Industry registration closes on September 2.

Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) organisers on Tuesday (September 1) announced a selection of 30 global acquisition titles outside the Official Selection.

TIFF Industry Selects titles hail from 29 countries and have been hand-picked by TIFF’s industry and festival programming teams and will screen to accredited users on the festival’s dedicated press and industry platform, TIFF Digital Cinema Pro. Industry registration closes on September 2.

2020 TIFF Industry Selects Titles:

A Good Man (France) Marie-Castille Mention-Schaar

After Love (UK) Aleem Khan

And Tomorrow The Entire World (Germany/France) Julia Von Heinz

Apples (Greece) Christos Nikou

Baby Done (New...

The awards ceremony for the most important animation festival of the year was… quiet. Instead celebrating in the iconic lakeside and mountains, this year’s awards were announced via live recording and an emailed newsletter. Annecy International Animated Film Festival went completely online this year.

After a few years with geographical focuses in Asian countries, this year’s festival still has had a relatively kind focus towards East Asian films. Notable Asia-based directors this year include the return of neo media artist Max Hattler (“Divisional Articulations”) with minimalist stop motion “Serial Parallels,” and Yifan Bao’s Satoshi Kon-esque, first film “The Town.” All in all, roughly 25 percent of the 21 awards in total went to Asia-based directors.

For the full list, consult the results below. Keep tabs on our reviews page of some of our festival favorites; Annecy is available to stream (for 17 euros!) until 30 June 2020.

Official Feature Films Competition

Annecy Cristal – “Calamity,...

“Calamity, a Childhood of Martha Jane Cannary,” the hand-drawn biopic about Martha (Calamity) Jane’s empowering journey West in 1863, from French director Rémi Chayé, won the Cristal Award at the Annecy 2020 Online animation festival. North American theatrical distribution has not been announced but leading contenders include GKids and Shout! Factory, which handled Chayé’s acclaimed Arctic adventure, “Long Way North.”

The Jury Award and Jury Distinction Award went to “The Nose or the Conspiracy of Mavericks,” an experimental drama about Stalin’s reign of terror from Russian director Andrey Khrzhanovsky, and” Kill It and Leave This Town” (Poland), a black-and-white hybrid dystopian drama about a despairing guy who hides in his memories, directed by Mariusz Wilczynski; and the Contrechamp Award and Contrechamp Distinction Award were bestowed on “My Favorite War”, a personal story from director Ilze Burkovska Jacobsen about growing up during the Cold War using cut-outs, and “The Shaman...

“Calamity, a Childhood of Martha Jane Cannary,” the hand-drawn biopic about Martha (Calamity) Jane’s empowering journey West in 1863, from French director Rémi Chayé, won the Cristal Award at the Annecy 2020 Online animation festival. North American theatrical distribution has not been announced but leading contenders include GKids and Shout! Factory, which handled Chayé’s acclaimed Arctic adventure, “Long Way North.”

The Jury Award and Jury Distinction Award went to “The Nose or the Conspiracy of Mavericks,” an experimental drama about Stalin’s reign of terror from Russian director Andrey Khrzhanovsky, and” Kill It and Leave This Town” (Poland), a black-and-white hybrid dystopian drama about a despairing guy who hides in his memories, directed by Mariusz Wilczynski; and the Contrechamp Award and Contrechamp Distinction Award were bestowed on “My Favorite War”, a personal story from director Ilze Burkovska Jacobsen about growing up during the Cold War using cut-outs, and “The Shaman...

June 20 was always meant to be the day the 2020 Annecy International Animation Film Festival would hand out awards at an energetic, paper airplane-filled gala, making it one of the most important dates on the global animation calendar.

While other aspects of the festival were changed dramatically by the fallout of the Covid-19 crisis, festival organizers felt it symbolically important to preserve that date. To that end, 10 days ahead of the festival’s official June 30 close, prizes were awarded via a live-streamed video on the festival’s YouTube channel in a charming ceremony which allowed spectators to interact with and congratulate the winners as prizes were announced. And of course, as is customary for Annecy, fill the chat with cries of “lapin” (French for rabbit) every time one of the furry creatures appeared on screen.

Coming full circle, Rémi Chayé’s “Calamity,” featured in a Work in Progress panel hosted by...

An utterly bizarre, frequently grotesque, occasionally obscene singularity, Polish artist Mariusz Wilczynski’s abrasive animation “Kill It and Leave This Town” exists so far outside the realm of the expected, the acceptable and the neatly comprehensible that it acts as a striking reminder of just how narrow that realm can be. Occupying a conceptual space several universes away from “reality,” the scratchy, hand-drawn interior epic is alarmingly niche in appeal, but if you can slip into that tiny schism, it certainly rewards with one of the most nightmarishly original dystopian visions you are likely to encounter this year.

Willfully lo-fi, rendered in often crude black and white lines and smudges occasionally accented with tiny spots of color — a pilot light, a row of cigarette packs, a fizzing neon sign in the shape of a ram — the film is noted animator Wilczyński’s first feature, but has been in the works for 11 years,...

A man grieving the loss of his loved ones retreats into the safety of memory, a place where time stands still and the departed walk among him. Over the years an imaginary city grows, populated by literary idols, comic book heroes, family members and friends. But even that mysterious place is eventually threatened by the passage of time, and the protagonist must make the difficult decision to return to the real world.

“Kill It and Leave This Town” is the debut feature by acclaimed Polish animator Mariusz Wilczyński, who spent 11 years crafting a dreamlike journey into the subconscious and the past. Produced by Agnieszka Ścibior for Bombonierka and Academy Award winner Ewa Puszczyńska for Extreme Emotions, it features the voices of Krystyna Janda, Andrzej Chyra, Maja Ostaszewska, Małgorzata Kożuchowska, and Barbara Krafftówna. Pic world premiered in Encounters, the new competitive strand of the Berlin Film Festival.

A self-taught artist who...

The dehumanization of life under Communism reaches into the most intimate spheres of the relationship between husband and wife and parents and child in Polish animator Mariusz Wilczynski’s terrifying first animated feature, Kill It and Leave This Town (Zabij to i wyjedz z tego miasta). A relentlessly sad tone poem of dissonant notes and off-key chords, its black and white images with an occasional touch of color depict a world of monstrous inhumanity and devastating interpersonal cruelty — hell, in short.

Drawing on his memories of growing up in the industrial town of Lodz in the 1960’s and ...

The dehumanization of life under Communism reaches into the most intimate spheres of the relationship between husband and wife and parents and child in Polish animator Mariusz Wilczynski’s terrifying first animated feature, Kill It and Leave This Town (Zabij to i wyjedz z tego miasta). A relentlessly sad tone poem of dissonant notes and off-key chords, its black and white images with an occasional touch of color depict a world of monstrous inhumanity and devastating interpersonal cruelty — hell, in short.

Drawing on his memories of growing up in the industrial town of Lodz in the 1960’s and ...

“Charlatan”

Director: Agnieszka Holland

The true story of Czech healer Jan Mikolášek, who enjoyed protection under the Nazis and the Communists, but then fell from favor.

Sales: Films Boutique

Berlinale Special Gala

“The Earth Is Blue as an Orange”

Director: Iryna Tsilyk

Budding cinematographer Myroslava lives in the middle of the Ukraine war zone. She sets out to make a film with her family, one that can offer them new perspectives, in

this documentary.

Sales: Cat&Docs

Generation 14plus

“The Exit of the Trains”

Directors: Radu Jude,

Adrian Cioflanca

This documentary follows an atrocity against Jews in 1941 in which the majority of the perpetrators were Romanian.

Sales: MicroFilm

Forum

“Frem”

Director: Viera Cakanyova

This doc is an unsettling poetic reflection on our view of the natural world, and the limits of anthropocentric thinking.

Sales: Hypermarket Film

Forum

“Kill It and Leave This Town”

Director: Mariusz Wilczynski

A visually powerful labyrinth of memories and feelings,...

Festival to close with premiere of What A Wonderful Family! 3: My Wife, My Life from Yoji Yamada.

Two Taiwanese films will open this year’s Hong Kong International Film Festival (Hkiff, March 19-April 5) – Jay Chern’s Taiwan-Japan co-production Omotenashi, and Maren Hwang’s Xiao Mei, which recently played in Berlin.

The festival will close with the world premiere of What A Wonderful Family! 3: My Wife, My Life from Japanese veteran filmmaker Yoji Yamada.

This year’s Filmmaker In Focus is Taiwanese actress Brigitte Lin, who started her career in the 1970s and starred in Wong Kar Wai’s Chungking Express.