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Masaaki Yuasa Presents Masterclass at Annecy Int'l Animation Film Festival

This year's Annecy International Animation Film Festival announced on Wednesday that Masaaki Yuasa (DEVILMAN crybaby, Japan Sinks: 2020) will be a Mifa (International Animation Film Market) Campus patron at this year's event and present a masterclass on June 17. He will also present a screening of his upcoming INU-OH film, the musical anime feature of Hideo Furukawa's Heike Monogatari: INU-OH no Maki (Tales of the Heike: Inu-Oh) novel.

The film will open in Japan in May 28.

Yuasa and Science SARU's Japan Sinks: 2020 anime series won the Jury Award for a TV Series for its first episode "The Beginning of the End" at last year's Annecy International Animation Film Festival that took place from June 14-19. Yuasa's Lu over the wall anime film earned the top "Cristal for a Feature Film" award at Annecy in 2017.

Established in 1960, Annecy is the world's oldest and largest animation film festival. This year's event will run from June 13-18 in the French town of the same name.

This year's festival will also screen the first episode of Shingo Natsume and Madhouse's original science-fiction anime Sonny Boy in the TV Films category.

Other Japanese works in competition include Yoriko Mizushiri's "Fuan na Tai" ("Anxious Body"), Atsushi Wada's Hantō no Tori ("Bird in the Peninsula"), Honami Yano's "Honekami" ("A Bite of Bone"), and Ryō Hirano's "KRASUE" in the Official Short Films category; and Koji Yamamura's "Hokkyoku-Guma Suggoku Hima" ("Polar Bear Bears Boredom") in the Young Audiences Short Films category.

Sources: Annecy International Animation Film Festival's website and YouTube channel, Cartoon Brew (Jamie Lang)