A Monkey's Tale

Jean-François Laguionie is a French animator, film director and producer of animation born 1939 in Besançon.

Laguionie was originally interested in theatre but his encounter with Paul Grimault gave him the opportunity to learn the techniques of animated film. Though they were very close to each other, Paul Grimault and Jean-François Laguionie rarely worked together (though Grimault produced Laguionie’s first three shorts).

Jean-François Laguionie then directed several short films, climaxing with the now famous La Traversée de l’Atlantique à la rame (Rowing across the Atlantic) (1978), which won the César Award for best short animated film in 1979.

He has also been a friend of Michel Ocelot, whose short film Les Trois inventeurs was shot in Laguionie’s home and used the magnet-aided method of cutout animation invented by him.

While working on his first feature-length animated film, Gwen, or the Book of Sand (Gwen, le livre de sable) in 1985, “Jef” founded the animation studio “La Fabrique”. Though appreciated by critics, Gwen only received rather limited popular acclaim.

Only in 1999 did his second feature film, Le Château des singes (The Castle of the Apes) premier, to win the Award for Best Animated Feature Film at the 5th Kecskemét Animation Film Festival.

Then in 2003 he premiered his third feature L’Île de Black Mór (The Island of Black Mór).

Jean-François Laguionie is now working on Le Tableau (The Picture), a feature-length film using both animation and live-action. —Wikipedia