The official website for the upcoming ‘Loving Vincent’ has just announced that its the world premiere will be held at the 2017 Annecy International Animation Film Festival in France. The film has been selected to screen in competition in the festival’s Official Selection, returning to Annecy after presenting as a Work in Progress back in 2015. It marks the first time in 50 years that a Polish director has had a film in the feature film competition.

Loving Vincent is the world’s first fully painted feature film, written & directed by Dorota Kobiela & Hugh Welchman, produced by BreakThru Films and Trademark Films. The film brings the paintings of Vincent van Gogh to life to tell his remarkable story. Every one of the 65,000 frames of the film is an oil-painting hand-painted by 125 professional oil-painters who travelled from all across the world to the Loving Vincent studios in Poland and Greece to be a part of the production. As remarkable as Vincent’s brilliant paintings, is his passionate and ill-fated life, and mysterious death.

It was first shot as a live action film with actors, and then hand-painted over frame-by-frame in oils. The final effect is an interaction of the performance of the actors playing Vincent’s famous portraits, and the performance of the painting animators, bringing these characters into the medium of paint.

Saoirse Ronan stars as Marguerite Gachet and the festival will run from 12th – 17th June 2017.