Over 700 animation film professionals will invade the French city of Lyon this week for the annual Cartoon Movie rendez-vous (March 2-4). 56 projects in various stages of production are on the programme. With ten projects selected, the Nordic region comes second after France. Spain and the UK come third with four projects each. Five Nordic animation films are backed by Nordisk Film & TV Fond: the completed films The Great Bear (Denmark) and The Magic Crystal (Finalnd) the films in production Legends of Valhalla-THOR (Iceland) and Ronal the Barbarian (Denmark) and in development Carlo's Casino (Denmark). Niko 2-Family Affairs, the sequel to the Finnish box office hit Niko-The Way to the Stars will be pitched for co-financing. The Danish production house Copenhagen Bombay is nominated at the Cartoon Tributes as ‘Producer of the Year'.