Picture Tree International has picked up world sales rights to animated feature “Snotty Boy,” which will world premiere in the main competition section of the Annecy Film Festival. The film is produced by Josef Aichholzer, whose credits include Oscar winner “The Counterfeiters.” Picture Tree has released the first trailer.
“Snotty Boy” is based on the art and childhood of Austrian artist Manfred Deix, whose admirers included Hollywood director Billy Wilder. It is set in the 1960s in the reactionary and ultra-Catholic village of Siegheilkirchen, where the gifted son of a hard-working innkeeper, called Snotty Boy, saves the live of the ravishingly pretty Mariolina from the malicious persecution by the village’s rightwing political die-hards.
The film is directed by Spaniard Santiago Lopez Jover, whose credits as an animator include “A Hologram for the King” and “Song of the Sea,” and Germany’s Marcus H. Rosenmüller, who directed “The Keeper” (Trautmann) and “Grave Decisions,” winner of the best director and screenplay prizes at the German Film Awards. Ernst Geyer coproduces.
Aichholzer said: “After such a long journey with a team put together from all over Europe and our Spanish-German director team in the lead, we are very proud to have the vision of Manfred Deix for the first time in moving images, and to premiere ‘Snotty Boy’ in Annecy is just the perfect platform to introduce the film to an international audience.”
Wilder said of Deix’s art: “His work scrutinizes the human condition in an acerbic manner the likes of which has not been seen since Karl Kraus. His key themes are that sickening congeniality that goes about its business as if nothing had changed, but also the arrogance that insists that the Waltz, Gugelhupf and hand kisses were created without a moment’s thought, and that the Danube continues to be as blue as ever. Manfred Deix is a skilled marksman who hits his target with the precision of Wilhelm Tell in his finest hour.”
“Snotty Boy” will be the closing film of the Munich Film Festival. Pandora Film will release it in Germany late autumn 2021, following the Austrian release by Filmladen.
The film is produced by Aichholzer Film in coproduction with Filmbüro Münchner Freiheit and Arri Media with the support of the Austrian Film Institute, the Austria Film Industry Support (FISA), Austrian broadcaster ORF, Filmfonds Vienna, Filmfund Lower Austria, Film und Fernsehfonds Bayern (FFF), and Filmfund Salzburg.