Paper snails vs Mickey Mouse: a different path for French animation

Disney once said that “the future cartoon extends beyond borders. What we do in America can be projected in Germany, India or Japan, through the world of children and adults. It is there that both the artistic cartoon and the educational cartoon will find their raison d’etre”.
Although France was the cradle of animated cinema, this authorship did not initially favour the birth of a dedicated French industry, leaving the international animation market dominated by others for more than twenty years. When the American industry had already set the borders of the animated cinema, two French craftsmen, Grimault and Laloux, driven by the limited financial capacity, a keen love for pure creation, and a refusal to reduce animation to a commercial product for children, developed completely new autonomous, independent devices, which revolutionised the international animation market and set the bases for the birth of a Nouvelle Vague of the French Animated cinema.