Animest Festival 19th edition, October 4-13: Let’s Take Back the City

Cities. Towns. Burgs. Townships. Why do we love’em? What parts of urban life delight us to no end? What makes us feel suffocated, tired, boxed in? We wonder, too, and we invite you to join the conversation on the 19th edition of the Animest Festival . The backdrop: a rich selection of screenings, special events, meetings with international guests, and training programs for artists.

After hosting over 15,000 spectators in 2023, the International Animation Film Festival returns to Bucharest silver screens between October 4-13, 2024. Starting today, you can get your Animest.19 passes through the Eventbook platform: Ten Stops and Full Trip. Interested in a guaranteed complete festival experience with unlimited access to all screenings, concerts and special events? Move quickly: there are only 50 Full Trip Passes available. Full details at https://bit.ly/AbonamenteAnimest19.

So, cities: statistics say more people have been living in urban rather than rural areas for less than two decades. How to best describe this way of life? Skyscrapers, strong human density, stress, asphalt, neon lights, tense energy, craziness, cultural diversity … so many different things. Our challenge to you, the Animest audience? Use our Urban Frames framework to rediscover the city, reconnect with its vibrancy and rhythm, and celebrate your community.

"The 19th edition of Animest will surprise and inspire through the events we’re planning as well as the films and guests converging on Bucharest in October. Expect a busy schedule with many screenings and artists from all over the world. Our selection centers on the city, on community, with all the advantages, subtleties, joys, and shortcomings they entail; the film selection strives to reflect these contrasts, so that every viewer finds something that speaks to them, represents their view, or challenges them either visually or conceptually. And, in the evenings, special events and concerts will reinterpret the festival’s theme in new, unique ways,” says Mihai Mitrică, festival director and programmer.

 Urban Frames: An Ode to Different Perspectives on The City
Street Spirit (Fade Out)
Urban Discipline
Overpass Graffiti
There Goes the Neighborhood
Street Fighting Man

This year’s five collections of thematic short films make up an urban playlist that will have you returning to the cinema throughout the festival. Thank our curators: festival director and programmer Mihai Mitrică and French journalist and film historian Alexis Hunot, who is traveling to Bucharest yet again this year.

The thematic collections will take you to diverse urban vistas, some of which you will certainly recognize. The classic Boomsville (directed by Yvonne Mallete, 1968) is an ironic view of town planning, or rather, the lack of it, and what happens to cities as a result. This film without words traces the growth of the typical city, from a tiny settlement in the vast North American wilderness to the car-clogged metropolis that so many cities are today, proving that some experiences are universally valid. The Argentinian short film The Employment/El Empleo (directed by Santiago Bou Grasso and Patricio Plaza, 2008), winner of the Animest Trophy in 2008, will challenge you with a literal take on working in a big city or organization, where you may feel like a cog in a machine. Deep Love (directed by Mykyta Lyskov, 2019) is an internationally multi-awarded Ukrainian production, part-documentary, telling the story of a big city during historical changes and decommunization through the prism of absurdity and black humor. Audiences will also travel to London for an authentic behind-the-scenes look at a popular urban hobby, thanks to The Skatebook (directed by Sofia Negri, 2022); to Barcelona, where a couple faces a challenge both domestic and urban: a bug-infested apartment, in Cockroaches/Cucarachas (directed by Marc Riba and Anna Solanas, 2017); and to Stuttgart, where drivers take heavy action against the chaos of traffic, in Benztown (directed by Gottfried Mentor, 2021). Skyscraper/Neboder (directed by Joško Marušić, 1981) successfully complements the festival’s urban theme by showing life in a skyscraper with no walls or ceilings, where day-to-day life is taken to the absurd.

“We wanted to know how animation captures the urban context. From Canada to Taiwan, to Colombia, to Ukraine and many more countries around the world, let's see the differences, the similarities of how urban life is described. Today, animation is not only on screens, it's part of urban living, as videomapping is often used for festivities and celebration, and cities even entice animators to go out of their studios and workshops, like in Urban Sphinx (directed by Maria Lorenzo, 2020), Bird Shit (directed by Caleb Wood, 2013) or Muto (directed by BLU, 2008). So grab your skates, rollers, bicycles, and sneakers and follow the animation creators in another way of looking at our urban environment," beckons Alexis Hunot.

Diverse, Different, yet Part of the Same Community
Animest is, by definition, born and bred in the city, a yearly urban festival reuniting animation consumers and creators at the intersection of familiar comfort and challenging freshness. In 2023, we marked our 18th birthday by celebrating the body – movement, dance, in real life as well as imagination. This year, we are turning our curiosity towards the city we are a part of, inviting you, its community, to explore, rediscover, listen, breathe in all its aromas – and share both what you love and what you’d change about your town.

"To me, Animest has always meant ‘movement,’ an opportunity for all sorts of people to meet. That’s why it was important to me to have many figures moving around in the illustration, a symbol of the festival’s dynamic nature. The crossroad in the picture is imaginary – an amalgamation of my memories of different cities. It also creates a frame that echoes this edition’s urban theme. I wanted the viewer to first see a simple, strong shape, and then explore all of the other interesting details, under the city’s blinking neon lights," said Tuan Nini, the artist who illustrated the Animest.19 official poster.

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The Animest Festival is a project of the Animest Association, co-financed by the MEDIA Program of the European Union and the Administration of the National Cultural Fund.

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