Born in1975 in Montelimar, France, where she was educated prior to 2000, Gaëlle Denis received a master’s in animation direction from London’s Royal College of Art. Part of this course involved a semester at Kyoto University of Arts in Japan, and eventually culminated in her award-winning short film, Fish Never Sleep. The film won the prize for Best European Animation from Cinanima Espihno in Nov 2002, a BAFTA for Best Animated Short Film in 2003, as well as the special jury prize at the Hiroshima Animation Festival and numerous other international film festival awards. Gaelle Denis has also won a number of other awards for her work, including First Prize from the Women’s Animation Film Festival in Vienna, First Prize in the Drawing Award in 1999 from ENSAD Paris, (where she studied between 1996 and 2000), as well as First Prize in the Drawing Award at London’s Royal College of Art in 2001. City Paradise also earned a BAFTA nomination for Short Animation in 2005 and other awards – including Best Innovative Film, Aspen 2005; Best Art Direction, Imagina 2005; Prix Ars Electronica Award, Linz, Austria 2005, and the Oberhausen International Short Film Festival Award, 2005.