---
title: "Swiss Stop-Motion Short 'Into the Forest' Wins Annecy's Young Audience Award"
description: "'Into the Forest,' a Swiss stop-motion short by Antonin Niclass in which three puppet monkeys turn an animation studio into a jungle, has won the Young Audience Award at the 2026 Annecy International Animation Festival."
category: "Entertainment"
category_url: https://herald.la/category/entertainment
author: "Camila Reyes"
published: 2026-06-27T11:38:47.000Z
updated: 2026-06-27T11:38:47.000Z
canonical: https://herald.la/article/swiss-stop-motion-short-into-the-forest-wins-annecy-s-young-audience-award
tags: ["animation", "Annecy", "stop-motion", "short film", "Switzerland", "film festival"]
---
# Swiss Stop-Motion Short 'Into the Forest' Wins Annecy's Young Audience Award

'Into the Forest,' a Swiss stop-motion short by Antonin Niclass in which three puppet monkeys turn an animation studio into a jungle, has won the Young Audience Award at the 2026 Annecy International Animation Festival.

A small, handmade film about the freedom of making things has taken one of the warmest honors at the world's biggest animation festival. *Into the Forest*, a Swiss stop-motion short directed by Antonin Niclass, won the Young Audience Award at the 2026 Annecy International Animation Festival, [Variety reported](https://variety.com/2026/film/global/annecy-young-audience-award-winner-into-the-forest-1236795968/).

## A studio becomes a jungle

The short's premise is disarmingly simple: three puppet monkeys, left alone in a cold animation studio, dismantle the workspace and rebuild it, prop by prop, into a lush jungle. It is a film about imagination as a kind of survival — and about creation as its own reward. One central image, a puppet breaking free of the rig that animates it, gives the idea its clearest form. "Creation is an act of emancipation," Niclass said, per Variety.

## A filmmaker on the rise

Niclass, a graduate of Britain's National Film and Television School, is no stranger to Annecy; his earlier shorts screened there in 2021 and 2022. *Into the Forest* was produced by Milos-Films and shot at a studio in Lausanne, and it carries a small bit of stop-motion in-jokery: one of its puppets is Oshi, the baby orangutan from director Claude Barras's 2024 feature *Savages*, lent through a collaboration between studios — a nod to the close-knit world of Swiss puppet animation.

## Why the award matters

The Young Audience Award is one of Annecy's more distinctive honors because it is decided by young viewers rather than an industry jury — an audience with little patience for anything that does not genuinely connect. For a patient, physical craft like stop-motion, that vote of confidence is its own kind of validation. As studios pour resources into computer animation and, increasingly, into AI tools, a hand-built short about three monkeys and a make-believe jungle just reminded the festival's youngest audience why the old magic still works.

## Sources

- ['Into the Forest' wins Young Audience Award at Annecy](https://variety.com/2026/film/global/annecy-young-audience-award-winner-into-the-forest-1236795968/)
- [Annecy International Animation Film Festival](https://www.annecyfestival.com/en)