20th Edition

Dahee is a South Korean animation filmmaker. After studying design in Seoul, she moved to France and earned a master’s degree in animation. She creates two seconds of animation per day, turning questions that arise in life into films and exploring what it means to exchange places with other beings. Her debut film, ‘Man on the Chair’ (2014), was featured in the Directors’ Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival and won the Cristal for Best Short Film at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival. Her films ‘The Empty’ (2016) and ‘Movements’ (2019) have also received international recognition and multiple awards. She is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and teaches at Hongik University.

Olga Bobrowska, PhD, is an animated film scholar, Assistant Professor at the Institute of Journalism and International Relations (IDSM) of the UKEN University in Kraków (Uniwersytet Komisji Edukacji Narodowej) (Poland), co-founder and festival director of StopTrik International Film Festival (Maribor, Slovenia), film culture activist and curator. She authored two monographs published by the CRC Press (‘Chinese Animated Film and Ideology, 1940s-1970s. Fighting Puppets’, 2023; ‘Chinese Animated Film and Ideology. Tradition, Innovation, and Interculturality’, 2024). She co-edited books ‘Obsession, Perversion, Rebellion. Twisted Dreams of Central European Animation’ (2016), and ‘Propaganda, Ideology, Animation. Twisted Dreams of History’ (2019). She is a permanent contributor to Zippy Frames.

After 15 years as a voice actor and a diploma in production management from Gobelins Paris, Valentin turned to film production. He worked on several projects as a production manager for different companies before setting up his own production company, Avec ou sans Vous, in 2022. Co-founded with Aristote Douroudakis, the company produces films for cinema, music videos, web series and virtual and immersive reality works.

Isabel Herguera has directed and produced several short films before directing the animated feature film Sultana’s Dream (2023). She taught at the National Institute of Design (NID) in Ahmedabad, India, and at the China Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA) in Beijing, China. Since 2017, she has been a professor of animation at KHM-Kunsthochschule für Medien Köln, Germany.

Mariam Kandelaki is a multifaceted professional in the world of animation, renowned for her expertise as both an animation director and producer, as well as organizer of International Film Festival “Nikozi”, leading educational project “Annecy Georgia” Animation project development workshop, founder of annual International Animation Conference Anima-Tbilisi and Georgian Animators Association SAQANIMA, and board member of EMILE European Animation Award EAA. The films that she worked on earned more than 50 awards at the festivals around the globe. Throughout her career journey, Mariam Kandelaki has continually demonstrated a deep commitment to advancing the art and industry of animation.

At 6’7” Piet Kroon stands as the world’s tallest internationally acclaimed writer and director of animation working today, pushing the art of animation to new heights, without ever talking down to an audience. He spearheaded the development and directed the animation of Warner Bros.’ irreverent cult comedy Osmosis Jones, about a cool white blood cell (Chris Rock) and a stuck up cold pill (David Hyde Pierce) that fight a nasty cold (Laurence Fishburne) inside Bill Murray’s rundown body. Kroon developed, wrote and directed HEINZ (2019), an animated comedy feature for young adults, based on a pleasantly deranged newspaper comic about a surly Amsterdam cat. As writer/director, story artist and story consultant Kroon brought his unique visual imagination to scores of animated features, ranging from Brad Bird’s fantastic Iron Giant (1997), Shrek2 (2004) (contributing Pinocchio’s fetish for girlie-underwear) to the gorgeous idiosyncratic Academy Award winner Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio (2022). Kroon’s independent short films received widespread acclaim. T.R.A.N.S.I.T (1997) was short-listed for the Oscar and nominated for the BAFTA and Cartoon d’Or. It was elected Best Animated Short Film by The Los Angeles Film Critics Association.