Luxembourg co-production 'A Long Goodbye' wins the immersive Cristal at Annecy

A virtual-reality work about a 72-year-old concert pianist slipping into dementia has handed Luxembourg's screen sector one of its most prominent festival honours of the year. A Long Goodbye, co-produced in the Grand Duchy by Tarantula Luxembourg with animation by the homegrown studio Velvet Flare, won the Cristal for best immersive work at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival, the genre's leading global showcase, where the winners were announced on 27 June.

Directed by the Belgian filmmakers Kate Voet and Victor Maes, the piece is a three-country co-production between Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands. Luxembourg's government celebrated the result the following day, casting it as fresh evidence of the country's expanding footprint in animation and immersive storytelling.

An intimate portrait of memory and loss

Running about half an hour, A Long Goodbye is an interactive, hand-drawn VR experience that places the viewer inside the apartment of Ida, an elderly pianist whose reality is dissolving. As the user handles objects and listens to tape recordings left by her husband, Daniel, the painterly world flickers between lucidity and confusion — an attempt to render, from the inside, what dementia feels like. The festival lists it as a short VR piece of roughly 30 minutes, made with a mix of 2D and 3D computer animation.

The directors have said the work grew out of personal experience: Maes watched his grandfather decline rapidly with Alzheimer's disease. The result is less a clinical study of illness than of the bond that endures through it.

A Long Goodbye is at once a personal and a universal story about human connection. It serves as a reminder that people are always so much more than their illness. Instead of focusing on what is lost, we need to stay close and hold on to shared affection.

That directors' statement, written by Voet and Maes, accompanied the work's earlier festival run. The lead producer is the Belgian outfit Cassette for Timescapes (Emmy Oost and An Oost), alongside Valk Productions of the Netherlands, with an original score by the Dutch composer Joep Beving.

What Luxembourg brought to the production

Tarantula Luxembourg, led by producer Donato Rotunno, served as the Grand Duchy's co-producer, while the Luxembourg studio Velvet Flare handled the 2D and 3D computer animation that gives the piece its tactile, painterly look. The project drew on public backing from the Film Fund Luxembourg and the national audiovisual production fund (Fonspa), part of a wider financing package that also included support from Flanders, the Netherlands and the European Union's Creative Europe MEDIA programme.

Guy Daleiden, director of the Film Fund Luxembourg, said in the government's French-language statement that the award reflects "the quality and ambition of the immersive works supported by the Film Fund Luxembourg, as well as the relevance of the investments made in favour of new forms of storytelling and their international reach." The Cristal is the principal prize in Annecy's immersive competition.

A sector building a festival track record

The Annecy prize caps a strong run for the work and for Luxembourg's immersive scene. A Long Goodbye had already taken the Venice Immersive Achievement Prize at the 82nd Venice Film Festival in 2025, and screened at the Luxembourg City Film Festival in March 2026. The Annecy Cristal now adds the animation world's most coveted immersive honour to that tally.

For a country of fewer than 700,000 people, Luxembourg has become a conspicuous presence at the festival. It fielded eight productions and co-productions at Annecy 2026 across competition and showcase strands, and the Film Fund ran an "Animated Luxembourg — Coming Next" presentation and a stand at MIFA, the festival's industry market. The Grand Duchy placed eight films in Annecy's 2025 official selection, and saw VR works such as Oto's Planet and Mamie Lou compete in 2024 — a sign that immersive formats, not just traditional cels and CGI features, have become part of the national strategy.

• Award: Cristal for best immersive work, Annecy 2026
• Luxembourg co-producer: Tarantula Luxembourg (Donato Rotunno)
• Animation studio: Velvet Flare (Luxembourg)
• Public backers: Film Fund Luxembourg, Fonspa, Creative Europe MEDIA
• Previous honour: Venice Immersive Achievement Prize, 2025

This year's top feature honour at Annecy, the Cristal for best feature film, went to The Violonist by Ervin Han and Raúl García, a Singapore-Spain-Italy co-production. For Luxembourg, though, the headline was the immersive Cristal — a category in which a small country with a maturing animation industry has quietly become a force.