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Animation Blockbusters in Competition for Anim’est Audience Award
Animation Blockbusters in Competition
for Anim’est Audience Award
The audience of the 10th edition of the Anim’est Animation Film Festival is invited to ready their attention and their pencils: 39 delicious animation short films will be screened this year in the special section Animash. The short films of this competitive section have been presented and awarded at important international festivals and will compete for the traditional vote of the Bucharest audience.
The short films selection is completed with 10 feature films outside of Anim’est’s competitive section, some of the most acclaimed recent animations that have been awarded with famous prizes and have toured many important animation festivals such as Annecy, Ottawa, Anima Mundi, Animfest Zagreb, Fantoche etc.
One of the highlights of section Animash is the feature film The Prophet, which opened Annecy festival this year. The film is produced by Salma Hayek and directed by Roger Allers, who has gathered nine of the most appreciated animators in the world (among which Bill Plympton and Joan C. Gratz, who have been official Anim’est guests in the past), to direct episodes inspired by the reputed Kahlil Gibran’s Prophet. Another important title of this section is the winner of Annecy top prize Avril et le monde truqué / April and the Twisted World, directed by Christian Desmares and Franck Ekinci, that is an enchanting hand-drawn story about the adventures of April (Marion Cotillard), a girl looking for her parents in 1940 Paris.
Hayao Miyazaki’s fans will enjoy the screening of documentary Yume to kyôki no ôkoku / The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness (dir. Mami Sunada), a unique foray behind the scenes of the most famous Japanese animation studio, Ghibli. The documentary unveils the intense work on the two most recent feature films produced by the studio, The Wind Rises (dir. Hayao Miyazaki) and Kaguya-Hime No Monogatari / The Tale of Princess Kaguya (dir. Isao Takahata), nominated for the Oscar this year and also selected in Animash. An additional serving of Japanese animation will be provided by Mamoru Hosoda, director of The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, Summer Wars and Wolf Children, nicknamed “the next Miyazaki” and present in Animash with his latest feature film, Bakemono no ko / The Boy and the Beast.
An original proposition is Battledream Chronicle, the first animation feature film made in Martinique, by Alain Bidard, former student of prestigious French school Supinfocom Valenciennes.
Five tales by Edgar Allan Poe come to life in the form of the animated anthology Extraordinary Tales (dir. Raúl García), voiced by Sir Christopher Lee, Bela Lugosi, Julian Sands, Roger Corman and Guillermo del Toro. Each tale was graphically adapted based on its contents and assigned to visual artists whose styles best express the complexity of the writer’s specifically dark universe. The mature audience is invited to take note of the screening of the Columbian feature film Sabogal (dir. Sergio Mejía Forero, Juan José Lozano), a legal thriller with powerful political undertones that was selected in Annecy competition this year.
Alain Gagnol and Jean-Loup Felicioli, the directors of the Oscar-nominated animation A Cat in Paris, complete the Animash feature selection with Phantom Boy, the latest production by French studio Folimage that was invited at Anim’est last year.
The selection of short films of Animash section that will compete for the Audience Award is peppered with equally attractive films.
2007 Anim’est Trophy winner Gitanjali Rao comes back with the short film True Love Story, a stroll between fantasy and reality in Bombay’s beguiling streets.
Two Oscar-nominated films will also compete in this section: The Bigger Picture (dir. Daisy Jacobs), which received the BAFTA award for the best British animation short and other awards at Cannes, Annecy and Fantoche, and Moulton og meg / Me and My Moulton, by the well-known Norwegian director Torill Kove. The section contains other delights such as the Best Animation at Clermont-Ferrand Somewhere Down the Line, an Irish production directed by Julien Regnard, Footprints, Bill Plympton’s latest short film, or Nuggets, Andreas Hykade’s most recent opus. The selection also includes the 3D short film Dji. Death Sails, directed by Dmitri Voloshin and produced by the Chișinău animation studio Simpals.
The tenth edition of Anim’est International Animation Film Festival will take place between October 2nd and October 11th 2015 at Cinema Studio, Cinema Elvira Popescu and Re: Animation Hub.
Festival passes for the 10th edition of Anim’est Festival are available for purchase in a limited number on www.eventbook.ro. A festival pass offers access to all festival screenings and events and costs 250 lei. Individual tickets for screenings will be available for purchase on the same site and will also be available at the cinemas. The price of one individual ticket will be 13 lei.
Anim’est International Animation Film Festival is a member of the pan-European Cartoon Network, it is organized by Este'n'est Association, with the support of the National Cinematography Centre, the Ministry of Culture, the Bucharest Centre for Cultural Projects - ARCUB, the National Cultural Fund Administration and the Romanian Cinematographers Union.
Institutional partners: the United States Embassy, the Romanian Cultural Institute, Japan Foundation, the French Institute, the Portugal Embassy, the Hungarian Institute, Royal Norwegian Embassy, the Czech Centre, the Polish Institute.
Partners: Groupama Insurance, Aqua Carpatica, Jameson, KFC, Pizza Hut, SeniorHyper, HBO, Domeniile Samburesti, F64, Noumax, Journey Pub, Flanco, Accenture.
Media partners: Days and Nights, Cinemagia, Metropolis Newspaper, cinemarx.ro, AaRC.ro, Mediafax, SUB25, animationmagazine.eu, Vice.
Monitoring Partner: mediaTRUST.