Biography

Thomas Szabo is a director and writer renowned for his unique narrative style: A combination of classical cinematography, spectacular fast pace action and sharp humor. His movies are fluent blend of animation and live action.

He gained a highly academic Background during art study in Paris and began his career as an film editor before directing his first animated series "Space Goofs (1997)" for Gaumont Multimedia which won the special award for short format series at the Annecy Film Festival in 1998 and very quickly became a worldwide success. Very similar in fact to "Oggy and the Cockroaches (1997)" on which he also worked as writer and story-boarder. He also supervised the creation of the video game "Stupid Invaders (2001)", created by Ubisoft and collaborated on the storyboard of the animated science fiction film "Renaissance (2006)".

He worked for the company Mac Guff ligne where he directed episodes for the series "Pat & Stan (2004)" with Pierre Coffin, he also directed in the same company "Journey to the center of a tree", a 4D film for Terra Botanica Park Angers (1st prize for a 4D short film at the Dimension 3 festival) and Raving "Rabbids Go Home (2009)" promotional film for video game.

In 2006, Thomas Szabo and Hélène Giraud teamed up to create the internationally-acclaimed Minuscule (2006) animated TV series for Futurikon. Produced in 2005, it earned a Pulcinella Award for the Best Series in 2006 at the Cartoons on the Bay animation festival, as well as a special jury award at the Hiroshima Festival in 2008.

In 2012, the pair adapted that universe to the big screen, co-writing and co-directing "Minuscule: Valley of the Lost Ants (2013)". The film was a hit in France and China and garnered numerous awards, nabbing the César for Best Animated Feature and was chosen to represent France in that year's Oscars and BAFTA Awards. "Minuscule 2: Mandibles from Far Away (2018)", their second feature, came out in France in January 2019 and is actually selected at the Colcoa festival in Los Angeles. The film becomes the biggest French success of 2019 in China.

Thomas Szabo was awarded the insignia of "Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters" in 2015.

Thomas Szabo was born on July 10th, 1966 in Créteil and graduated from ESAA DUPERRE (Duperre Art School) in 1987.
- IMDb mini biography by: Lambiek