06/11/2014 - Several European films amongst submissions

Twenty animated features, one up from this year’s 19, will compete at the 87th Academy Awards in 2015. Though the majority of submissions are from the US, there are some strong European contenders. France/Belgium co-production Jack and the Cuckoo-Clock Heart [+see also:
trailer
film profile], directed by Stéphane Berla and Mathias Malzieu is a 19th-century drama about a man whose heart was replaced with a clock when he was born. Another France/Belgium co-production, Minuscule: Valley of the Lost Ants [+see also:
trailer
film profile], directed by Hélène Giraud and Thomas Szabo, is set in a peaceful forest, where the remains of a picnic trigger a ruthless war between rival ant colonies, obsessed with gaining control of the same prize - a box of sugar cubes. 

Phil Lord and Christopher Miller’s The Lego Movie, where an ordinary Lego construction worker, thought to be the prophesied ‘Special’, is recruited to join a quest to stop an evil tyrant from gluing the Lego universe into eternal stasis, is a Denmark/Australia/US co-production. Latvia/US co-production Rocks in my Pockets [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Signe Baumane
film profile], directed by Signe Baumane, follows five women in a family who battle with depression and madness.

Tomm More’s Song of the Sea [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Tomm Moore
film profile], an Ireland/Denmark/Belgium/Luxembourg/France co-production, is about a child who is the last of the selkies, women in Irish and Scottish legends who transform from seals into people.

Five films from the twenty submissions will be nominated on January 15.