A Town Called Panic (Panique au Village) [PG]

Putting you in the mood for laughs, not love. 
 
We’re horsing around to bring you this speedy stop-motion treat. Get set to revisit a very weird town and its excentric inhabitants- a cast of antique Western toys (and a few plastic farmyard animals).  

Things go wrong in Panic (again!) when Cowboy and Indian order too many bricks for the barbeque pit they’re trying to build for their friend Horse’s birthday. 
 
Following a short film in 1991, and a TV series in 2001, released by Aardman Studios, A Town Called Panic (Panique Au Village) premiered in 2009 – where it was the first stop-motion title to be screened at the Cannes Film Festival.  

The directorial duo Stéphane Aubier and Vincent Patar were first inspired to animate Horse in an unsophisticated village setting when they were both students at the Belgian art academy in the eighties. The pair worked with eclectic paper cut-outs as well as hand-drawn animation when they hit on the idea of moving stiff plastic toys through a stretch of countryside made from cardboard, and the town of “Panic” was born. 
 
The only question we’ll be asking on the most romantic day of the year is – will Horse and his girlfriend Jacqueline ever be left alone?

Join us for our double-bill of French film – including our International shorts programme, From ‘La Fantasmagorie’ to the Future – to make alternative plans this Valentine’s Day.