Speak­ers & experts

Andrea comes with a long­stand­ing expe­ri­ence from var­i­ous lead­er­ship roles at the LEGO Group. She start­ed out as IP lawyer. At the LEGO Group she was instru­men­tal in devel­op­ing the licens­ing divi­sion with a spe­cial focus on cre­at­ing a licens­ing pro­gram of high-qual­i­ty and brand rel­e­vant unique­ness. Pub­lish­ing became the cat­e­go­ry she has the biggest pas­sion for and joined since Egmont Sto­ry House as VP Glob­al Licens­ing work­ing eg. with Dis­ney and Hachette. She is now VP of Strat­e­gy at Ameet.

Nalé­ka N’Guessan selects kids and preschool con­tent for Okoo, France Télévi­sions’ new lin­ear and non-lin­ear children’s brand and cor­ner of France​.tv.

She start­ed her career man­ag­ing the con­tent local­i­sa­tion of Lagardère‘s young adults and children’s chan­nels, before being in charge of chil­dren con­tent acqui­si­tions for Gul­li Rus­sia and Africa. She par­tic­i­pat­ed launch­ing the French fam­i­ly-ori­ent­ed chan­nel Dis­cov­ery Fam­i­ly at Discovery.Inc in 2017, pri­or join­ing France Télévi­sions 3 years ago.

Pas­sion­ate about comics and ani­ma­tion since his child­hood, Celeste Surugue has been active­ly involved in the orga­ni­za­tion of numer­ous fairs and meet­ings around these top­ics dur­ing his stu­dent years.

He joined Hachette Livre in 1995 and became part of Hachette Col­lec­tions, a major play­er in the pub­lish­ing of col­lectibles and cul­tur­al prod­ucts in series. He cre­at­ed a sub­sidiary in the Unit­ed King­dom in 2000 and took over the man­age­ment of the French one in 2008.

In 2014, he also became Man­ag­ing Direc­tor of Les Edi­tions Albert René Edi­tions, the com­pa­ny that owns and man­ages all rights relat­ed to the adven­tures of Aster­ix and oth­er works co-cre­at­ed by the bril­liant René Goscin­ny and Albert Uderzo.

He has thus been involved in the devel­op­ment of the last 2 ani­mat­ed films released with M6 (The Domain of the Gods and The Secret of the Mag­ic Potion) and is now also fol­low­ing the cre­ation of the future Net­flix ani­ma­tion project, writ­ten and direct­ed by Alain Chabat.

In 2015, he launched a new TV ani­ma­tion series project, cen­tered around Ide­fix, to be pro­duced by an audio-visu­al sub­sidiary of Hachette Livre cre­at­ed espe­cial­ly for the occa­sion: Stu­dio 58. Since the offi­cial release in 2021, the suc­cess of this series has been imme­di­ate in every ter­ri­to­ry it has been broad­cast­ed in.

Jean-René Aucou­turi­er start­ed his car­ri­er as the Mar­ket­ing Direc­tor at the French news­pa­per Libéra­tion and the Édi­tions Atlas, before leav­ing for Lagardère Active’s TV hub in 2007.

He is EVP in charge of Sales Depart­ment includ­ing TV Dis­tri­b­u­tion World­wide, new TV chan­nels devel­op­ment and new busi­ness as Gulli’s brand licensing.

He man­aged the launch of Gul­li Africa in 2015 and Gul­li Bil Ara­bi in 2017. The TV chan­nels of the group are present today in over 100 coun­tries around the world.

Fol­low­ing a career in TV broad­cast­ing, I launched MaG­ic C with the desire of widen the scope of con­tent avail­able. I’m cur­rent­ly work­ing as asso­ciate pro­duc­er with part­ners who share my vision (Andar­ta Pictures/​Ewilan’s quest and Baïdir — Maybe Movies/​Zombillenium and Calami­ty the Tv Series — Cross River/​Virtual Past — Tam Tam / A AI). MaG­ic C also advis­es Broadcasters/​SVOD ser­vices, Pro­duc­ers, Plat­forms and Gov­ern­men­tal bod­ies on the devel­op­ment of their projects. And I’m SG of SudAn­im too.

In 2014 Luce Gros­jean found­ed Sève Films, a dis­tri­b­u­tion com­pa­ny des­tined to pro­mote stu­dent films in ani­ma­tion fes­ti­vals, but also young tal­ent direc­tors. In 2017, she asso­ci­at­ed with Miyu Pro­duc­tions to cre­ate Miyu Dis­tri­b­u­tion, spe­cial­ized in dis­tri­b­u­tion in fes­ti­vals and inter­na­tion­al sales for animation.

Her com­pa­ny received the Award of the Best Short Film Dis­tri­b­u­tion com­pa­ny in 2020 by UniFrance and La Fête du Court Métrage.

Amit Devani serves as Direc­tor of Insights in EMEA at Par­rot Ana­lyt­ics based in Lon­don. In his cur­rent role, he over­sees ini­tia­tives that trans­form data into insights at every step of the con­tent life-cycle, includ­ing com­mis­sion­ing, mar­ket­ing, acqui­si­tion & dis­tri­b­u­tion. Pri­or to Par­rot Ana­lyt­ics, Amit spent five years at pub­lic ser­vice broad­cast­er, Chan­nel 4 help­ing to build out the dig­i­tal ana­lyt­ics and insights team that served its VOD chan­nel, All 4.

Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of ​“RAI Ragazzi” (RAI Kids), con­trol­ling 2 free-to-air TV Chan­nels (RAI Yoyo, the lead­ing Ital­ian chil­dren’s chan­nel, and RAI Gulp), as well as the units for pro­duc­tion and co-pro­duc­tion of Ani­ma­tion, kids’ dra­ma and live shows. RAI Ragazzi is one of the main Euro­pean com­mis­sion­ers and investors in kids’ con­tent. He is cur­rent­ly Chair­per­son of the EBU Kids Media experts Group.

Pre­vi­ous­ly, Luca has been work­ing for years as Deputy Direc­tor of RAI Fic­tion, RAI’s depart­ment in charge of TV dra­ma pro­duc­tion. Before join­ing RAI, he worked as a jour­nal­ist of inter­na­tion­al affairs, as UN infor­ma­tion offi­cer and as man­ag­er of an Ital­ian con­sult­ing firm. 

The Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur Region has been sup­port­ing ani­ma­tion since 2010. We pro­vide sup­port for fea­ture films, short films and films or series for tele­vi­sion at the writ­ing, devel­op­ment and pro­duc­tion stages. Now with a bud­get of 1M€, the region­al sup­port fund for ani­ma­tion has financed 77 projects over the past 11 years. Pro­duced in one of the 13 region­al stu­dios or by com­pa­nies that have cho­sen to set­tle in the region, these projects have cre­at­ed a dynam­ic ecosystem.

Suzanne has exclu­sive­ly cre­at­ed children’s con­tent for RTÉ since 2007. Her expe­ri­ence ranges from cre­at­ing & devel­op­ing pro­gramme for­mats, pro­duc­ing & direct­ing and com­mis­sion­ing children’s con­tent for both lin­ear and dig­i­tal plat­forms. Suzanne was appoint­ed Head of Children’s Con­tent, for RTÉ, in 2018. Since then she has worked close­ly with both the Irish & Inter­na­tion­al ani­ma­tion and live-action sec­tors deliv­er­ing high-end con­tent for both the RTÉjr & RTÉ Kids channels.

In his long career A.B. has been co-founder and Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary of ASI­FA Italy and a board mem­ber of CAR­TOON. Then he joined RAI, set­ting up the pro­duc­tion activ­i­ties in ani­ma­tion and the chil­dren’s the­mat­ic chan­nels. At RAI he also found­ed and direct­ed ​“Car­toons on the Bay”, mak­ing it one of the main events in the field. In those years ​“Ani­ma­tion Mag­a­zine” ranked him among the most influ­en­tial peo­ple in the ani­ma­tion indus­try. Now he’s Showlab’s Head of Ani­ma­tion and VP of Car­toon Italia.

Super RTL is the lead­ing TV chan­nel and con­tent provider for kids in Ger­many and part of RTL Deutsch­land with near­ly 27 years of kids exper­tise. Under its two umbrel­la brands Tog­goli­no and Tog­go, the chan­nel is aimed at chil­dren aged 2 to 13 dur­ing day­time. Super RTL pur­sues a broad mul­ti­me­dia strat­e­gy and oper­ates two Free to air chan­nels, SVoD and AVoD offer­ings, web­sites, games & apps, a radio chan­nel (Tog­go Radio), a year­ly live road show and its own CP agency…

I am Alexan­dre Man­zanares, I am 28 years old. I start­ed work­ing in the audio­vi­su­al indus­try through music. I had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to work with labels, authors, com­posers, pro­duc­ers and musi­cians. In 2017, I con­tin­ued my stud­ies in ani­ma­tion cin­e­ma at the Ecole des Nou­velles Images in Avi­gnon in the Vau­cluse, and I grad­u­at­ed as a ​“Dig­i­tal Direc­tor”. Co-direc­tor of ​“Parade” and ​“Tré­sor”, two short ani­ma­tion films. After hav­ing worked in Frank­furt in adver­tis­ing or in Angoulême in ani­ma­tion, I work today at the TNZPV stu­dio in Arles on ani­ma­tion projects as ​“LookDev” artist and ​“Light­ing” artist. I have also been devel­op­ing a fea­ture film for sev­er­al months.

A grad­u­ate of the Sor­bonne, Marc Rius has worked as a script con­sul­tant for France Télévi­sions, TF1 and Pathé. After writ­ing for live-action cin­e­ma, he came across ani­ma­tion as a script con­sul­tant at Supin­fo­com Arles (now MoPA) and then at ENSI. Since 2010, he is pro­duc­er, CEO of TNZPV Pro­duc­tions & Stu­dio. In 2020, he cre­at­ed TNZPV Annecy with his part­ners. Marc Rius con­tin­ues his work as a scriptwriter for ani­ma­tion on series and film projects. Recent­ly, he wrote a fea­ture film inspired by the work of Jacques Tati and the graph­ic uni­verse of David Mer­veille. He is also an author of chil­dren’s books.

With more than 15 years of expe­ri­ence in enter­tain­ment, Aymer­ic CAS­TAING is spe­cial­ized in trans­me­dia con­tent and shares his exper­tise through var­i­ous activ­i­ties: he is the founder and pres­i­dent of Trans­me­dia clus­ter COBO and he is a found­ing mem­ber of the nation­al trans­me­dia asso­ci­a­tion PXN.

Always inter­est­ed in new ways to tell and pro­duce sto­ries, he found­ed and now runs UMAN­I­MA­TION, an XR com­pa­ny devel­op­ing a cat­a­log of nar­ra­tive and immer­sive con­tent designed for new media (TV, VR, AR…).

As a PhD in Devel­op­men­tal Psy­chol­o­gy, Telid­ja Klaï is respon­si­ble for 360°programming strat­e­gy and tar­get strate­gies at Ket­net the ded­i­cat­ed children’s lover­band of the pub­lic broad­cast­er VRT in Bel­gium. The main thrust of her activ­i­ties in this field are the devel­op­ment of chil­dren and Ketnet’s vision and val­ues. Besides her strate­gi­cal work, Telid­ja is also respon­si­ble for pro­gramme acqui­si­tions and co-pro­duc­tions ani­ma­tion for Ketnet.

In his role at Warn­er­Me­dia Lars Wag­n­er is respon­si­ble for the dig­i­tal con­tent strat­e­gy and pro­duc­tion of inter­ac­tive games & apps, YouTube orig­i­nal short form con­tent and the web­sites of Warn­er­Me­di­a’s kids brands Car­toon Net­work, Car­tooni­to, Boing and Boomerang across EMEA. Addi­tion­al­ly he serves as VP of kids chan­nels in Cen­tral and East­ern Europe for these brands. Pri­or to join­ing Warn­er­Me­dia Lars has been serv­ing a decade at The Walt Dis­ney Com­pa­ny as CMO and GM of brand­ed tele­vi­sion in GSA.

Zep­to­Lab is a glob­al gam­ing com­pa­ny well-known for its inno­v­a­tive mobile games and ​“Om Nom Sto­ries” ani­ma­tion series. Start­ing with the icon­ic hit Cut the Rope 11 years ago, the com­pa­ny has pro­ceed­ed to grow its Om Nom brand in mul­ti­ple direc­tions with the 360 dis­tri­b­u­tion approach.

PROD­UCTS GAMES: Cut the Rope, King of Thieves, Crash Are­na Tur­bo Stars, Robot­ics, Bul­let Echo, Evo Pop, Om Nom Run.

PROD­UCTS ANI­MA­TION: Om Nom Sto­ries (200 episodes). Eva and Om Nom (to be released in August, 2022).