Jim Queen

Jim Queen is the first feature from the animators Nicolas Athané and Marco Nguyen, co-written with Simon Balteaux and Brice Chevillard and produced by the Paris adult-animation studio Bobbypills with Belgium's uMedia. It was financed partly by Eurimages and regional funds and partly by crowdfunding, and it premiered in the Midnight Screenings at Cannes in May 2026, in contention for the Caméra d'Or and the Queer Palm, before The Jokers released it in French cinemas in June.

The premise is a queer comedy's version of a contagion thriller: a virus that turns gay men heterosexual, and a gym-sculpted icon, Jim, who has to save the scene that once adored him. Alex Ramirès voices Jim and Jérémy Gillet his sidekick Lucien, with Shirley Souagnon, François Sagat and Philippe Katerine among the French cast; the English dub brings in Jordan Firstman, Matteo Lane, Nicole Byer, John Cameron Mitchell and Bob the Drag Queen. The look is bright, cartoonish and deliberately excessive, and the humour is explicit — this is adult animation in the full sense of the term.

Critics took to it: 95% on Rotten Tomatoes, and the Silver Audience Award for animated features at Fantasia. The Letterboxd response, close to four out of five across more than fifty thousand ratings, made it one of the most-logged French films of the year. It sits in a lineage of European animation that is happy to be rude for a reason, alongside Unicorn Wars, and as a comedy about community it has more affection in it than its poster suggests.