Generative AI has been the most combustible subject at the world's largest animation gathering for years running, and this edition proved no exception.
The 2026 Annecy International Animation Film Festival, running from June 21 to 27 in southeastern France, saw its anti-AI tensions spill directly into a competition screening when protesters disrupted the world premiere of Danse Macabre, a short film by Dutch director Hisko Hulsing. Festival artistic director Marcel Jean responded publicly, condemning the demonstration while acknowledging the anxiety gripping animation professionals worldwide.
The film was built from around 75 oil paintings, created across multiple countries with more than 30 artists involved, and took 11 years to make. Rather than starting with a traditional script, it grew out of Dmitri Shostakovich's Symphony No. 10, with Hulsing building visual sequences around the music's structure. The production used AI shader systems trained on Hulsing's own painted surfaces to help match digital animation to the textures of the original canvases, though the process still required extensive manual correction on nearly every frame.
That narrow, self-trained use of AI was enough to draw protest.
Hulsing is no outsider to this community. Born in 1971 in Amsterdam, he is a director, animator, composer, painter, and storyboard artist. He directed both seasons of Undone for Amazon Prime, which appeared on top ten lists from The New York Times and Time Magazine and won the Annecy Jury Award in 2020. In 2022, he directed the Sandman episode A Dream of a Thousand Cats for Netflix and Warner Bros. His short Junkyard earned the Grand Prize at the Ottawa International Animation Festival.
The controversy fits a pattern that has steadily intensified at Annecy. In 2024, audience members booed the screening of a French music video made using generative AI software. Jean told Screen at the time: "It's sad, especially for the people who worked on it, but we will not impeach people for booing." By 2025, representatives of international animation, screenwriters, and actors guilds staged a formal protest, with around 150 people gathering on the lawn in front of the festival's Bonlieu hub.
Opponents cite employment concerns, environmental impact, and the use of datasets scraped from copyrighted works without authorization. This year's edition featured a Think Tank and several conferences focused on AI tools and use cases, signaling that the festival has no plans to sideline the discussion.
Jean has previously framed his curatorial stance in pragmatic terms. "If the major studios decide to change their pipeline, and if they massively use AI, Annecy will not be the problem," he said in 2024.
Danse Macabre was produced by Valk Productions in the Netherlands, Autour de Minuit in France, Vivi Film in Belgium, and Cinemon Entertainment in Hungary. Its competition slot at a festival still wrestling openly with the ethics of new technology ensures the conversation around Hulsing's five-minute film will outlast its runtime.
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