Watch: Delightful Animated Short ‘Direction les Champs’ from France​

“We were almost there… We were this close…” Don’t miss the peloton when they come! Another delightfully entertaining animated short film to enjoy from France. Direction les Champs is a 7-min animated short made as a graduation project by students at the prestigious animation school Gobelins in Paris. Charmant! Featuring a nicely painted 2D look with emotional animation, telling the story of a young girl and her older brother. This summer, the Tour de France is finally coming by the tiny village of Laventour. For our 8-years-old Sophie, there is no way her big brother Benoît can miss it. She does what she needs to do to try and get them to watch the event. FS has featured many, many excellent Gobelins short films over the years – Nube this year, Tears of the Mountain & Niccolo last year, plus the Miyazaki short, and the distinct horror short Hôtel Nuit Noire. What I love about this one Direction les Champs is the way the animation style switches into a more visually goofy, wacky look at times like when they’re riding the scooter by the cows. Yet there’s still so much genuine humanity in this story and where it goes. Absolutely magnificent work here! Congrats.

Thanks to Gobelins for debuting this short on their YouTube channel. Intro from YouTube: “This summer, the Tour de France is finally coming by the tiny village of Laventour. For our 8-years-old Sophie, there’s no way her big brother Benoît can miss it. Once the village’s cycling champion, he hasn’t spoken, left his room or shown any interest for the outside world for months. But Sophie isn’t giving up that easily: the peloton is coming… and so are they!” Direction les Champs is an animated film created as a 2026 graduation project by students from Gobelins animation school. Directed by: Calixte Chateau, Mingzhen Cui, Alexandre Kittel, Lancelot Lemau de Talancé, Menghan Li, Cassiopée Melero, & Lucia Pérez Dominguez. Featuring music & sound design by Jérémy Ben Ammar. Produced and created at Gobelins Paris – for info on this school, head to their official website. Released by Miyu Distribution. For more info on the film visit YouTube or IG @directionleschamps.gobelins. To enjoy more shorts (and animation), click here. Any good?

Read more posts in: Animation, Short Film, To Watch