Annecy 2026 puts Brothers Quay in lifetime-achievement focus

Annecy 2026 coverage identifies the Brothers Quay as recipients of an Honorary Cristal/Lifetime Achievement spotlight, alongside masterclass activity during the festival. For SMDB this is not only a festival note: it is a durable signal that the Quays' puppet-animation and object-animation body of work still functions as a living reference point for the international animation field, not only as historical art-film material. The item should be treated as a context source for future pages around the Quays, their feature Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass, and broader stop-motion festival recognition.\n\nThe lead is useful because recent SMDB news already tracks Annecy 2026's Aardman/LAIKA-facing industry visibility, but the Quay angle points to a different branch of stop-motion: surreal, adult, gallery-adjacent, and experimental puppet filmmaking. The next review pass should verify the festival's own archive/program page before catalogue ingestion, then connect the news to verified works and people rather than using it as a credit source. External links are only citations; the on-site summary should preserve the database value by explaining why this festival recognition matters for stop-motion history and discovery.