Montreal: Sylvain Chomet’s animation feature Les Triplettes de Belleville/Belleville Rendez-Vous, a minority Canada/France/Belgium coproduction, has been selected to close the 27th edition of the Montreal World Film Festival on Sept. 7.

Hand-drawn in a deliberate antiquated visual style, Belleville tells the story of an old woman who battles the French Mafia to retrieve her godson, kidnapped while racing in the Tour de France.

The film is produced by Montreal’s Champion Productions (producer Paul Cadieux), France’s Productions Les Armateurs and Belgium’s Vivi Film.

Chomet was born in France and resides in Montreal. His 1996 short, La Vieille Dame et les Pigeons, won numerous international awards including the Genie for best Canadian animated short.

Belleville is distributed in Canada by Remstar Distribution/Alliance Atlantis.

The WFF jury, charged with selecting the winner of this year’s Grand Prix des Ameriques, the festival’s top prize awarded to the best feature film in the World Competition section, is headed by two co-presidents: Swedish director Jan Troell, best known to North American audiences for his Oscar-nominated films The Emigrants and The New Land, and Polish-French director Andrzej Zulawski (Possession, La Femme publique, Fidelity).

WFF has programmed 446 films (including 251 feature films) from 71 countries. Among the features, 124 are international or world premieres and 74 are North American premieres. Of the 74, 38 are in the running for the festival’s first feature film prize.

-www.ffm-montreal.org