A Swiss stop-motion short won the Young Audience Award at the Annecy Animation Festival on Friday. The film is called Into the Forest, and it was directed by Antonin Niclass.
According to Variety, the short follows three handcrafted monkeys who transform a cold animation studio into a vibrant jungle through creativity, collaboration, and resourcefulness. It was produced by Milos-Films and shot at Hélium Films' studios in Lausanne, Switzerland.
The film also features the puppet of Oshi, the baby orangutan from Claude Barras' 2024 film Savages, through a collaboration with Nadasdy Film.
Niclass is a graduate of the National Film and Television School in the United Kingdom and has become a familiar presence at Annecy. His previous short films Do Not Feed the Pigeons (2021) and Coup de Théâtre (2022) were both selected for the festival. With Into the Forest, he shifted his focus toward younger audiences while still building a film with multiple layers.
The film has no dialogue. Monkeys communicate through cries, which means the score carries much of the emotional weight. Niclass worked with sound designer Loic Kreyden and composer Fabio Amurri on a score that moves from mechanical, industrial rhythms at the start to more melodic and ambient sounds as the jungle takes shape.
"I wanted something playful that builds up as the film progresses, before revealing its full strength when their own magnificent, homemade jungle unveils itself," Niclass told Variety. "We tried many approaches with Fabio, initially aiming for a more traditional, jungle-focused adventure style with percussions. However, we realised our story wasn't set in Borneo, but in a stop-motion studio in Lausanne… We therefore opted for a rather electronic approach using synthesiser."
The film opens with its central monkey breaking free from its animation rig. Niclass described that sequence as a way to introduce stop-motion concepts to children while also setting the film's core theme.
"Our monkey comes to life, animated by human hands, but then he breaks free of his chains and needs to find his own path," he said. "This is the moment a puppet stops being an object and becomes a character. In a way, as filmmakers, we lose control over the character we depict; it becomes an autonomous entity in people's minds. Symbolically, this sets the theme immediately: creation is an act of emancipation."
Animator Timothée Crabbé handled the movement in that opening sequence, blending live-action hands with the stop-motion figure. Niclass noted it is one of the rare films where the rig is not erased in post-production.
The Annecy Animation Festival is one of the most prominent showcases for animated short and feature films in the world. The Young Audience Award recognizes work made specifically with younger viewers in mind.
