Five must see titles at Anim’est 2010’s Feature-length film Competition

France, Italy, Norway, Columbia, Japan and Serbia are the origin countries for this year’s five titles competing for the 2010 Anim’est Best Feature-length film Award, offered by Estenest and Toon Boom. This year’s competition selection dedicated to feature film is more stylistically diverse than ever before, blending in films awarded at important festivals with lower profile ones which are to be premiered in Romania: epic, sci-fi, action and experimental films.

Los extraños presagios de León Prozak / The Mysterious Presages of León Prozak (dir. Carlos Eduardo Santa, Columbia, 2009), selected at the most reputed animated film festival in the world- Annecy, is the first South-American film to be selected in the Anim'est Feature Film Competition. With a shocking and brave approach, the most provocative and daring of all five feature films tells the story of León Prozak, the one who ends up lending his own head to Mefistofel in return for some circus acrobatic stunt The film’s sequences are animated by different plastic artists and stand as an homage to the thrill of painting. The animated paintings take on different topics, from politics to eroticism, by expressing shocking visions on the world.

Yet another special appearance in the Anim’est competition is the Serbian film Edit and I / Technotise - Edit i ja (dir. Aleksa Gajić, 2009), the first animated Serbian feature film produced in a Balkanic country in the last years and, of course, the first film to represent Serbia amongst the five feature films competing for the Best Feature-length film Award. Edit and I, the Sci-Fi- action movie will be taking the audience all the way to Belgrad, year 2074, where Edit, a psychology student, turns to a dealer to give her a chip implant which should help her remember everything she sees, in order to pass an exam she had failed several times before. Sadly, Edit begins losing control over what’s happening to her. A parallel entity develops in her body. Director Aleksa Gajić is one of this year’s Anim’est key-guests as he will be explaining to the Romanian and Balkanic directors arrived in Bucharest how he succeeded in making an animated feature-length film in a less than favourable economical and legislative climate.

Japan returns to the Anim’est Competition, after claiming its Award for Best Feature Film in 2009 for the high-profile Piano Forrest. The Anim’est screens will show the award winner for Best Animated film at both the Japanese Film Academy as well as the prestigious Sitges Film Festival, Summer Wars / Samâ wôzu (dir. Mamoru Hosoda, 2009), the representative of the most productive animated film making country in Asia. Summer Wars, the delicate and honest tale about the strength of family ties affected by serious threats, starts off with Keiji Koiso’s story, an eleventh grade student and maths wiz kid. He accepts a summer job at Natsuki’s family, a girl he secretly has a crush on. On his arrival, he finds out he must act as Natsuki’s fiancée for a family reunion in honour of  Sakae, the family’s parental figure who is turning 90. Meanwhile, his attempt of solving a mathematical equation produces the collision between Earth and a parallel world, which will cast unexpected repercussions upon his „adoptive” family.

Another title collecting many important film festival selections the likes of Annecy or Stuttgart is Turns Evil / Kurt blir grusom (dir. Rasmus A. Sivertsen, Norway, 2008), a charmingly funny feature film telling the heartfelt story of Kurt, a clever guy and one of the best forklift drivers in the port. He is the best he can at doing his job, but not everybody appreciates that as they should. One day, someone tells him doctors are far more important than forklift drivers, which shatters his self-trust and makes him want to become somebody important. Time passes and Kurt’s ambition deepens and darkens to the point where it results in some of the most unpredictable and absurd consequences to those around him.

The Franco-Italian film Eleonore’s Secret / Kerity, la maison des contes (dir. Dominique Monféry, 2009) completes the 2010 Anim’est Feature film Competition mix with a dose of classically animated epic, portraying Natanaël’s story, a 7 year old boy who hasn’t yet learned how to read. An eccentric aunt leaves his family the inheritance of a house and a book collection. Nal learns how books are the shelter of all children’s books heroes, and he must defend them, for, if they leave the library, their stories will follow them and leave as well.

The five feature films in the 2010 Anim’est Competition will be viewed and awarded by jury members Mihai Chirilov- Romanian film critic, Italian animated film director Simone Massi, Phil Mulloy- one of Brittain’s most successful independent animation directors of the last decades, Portuguese director Regina Pessoa and Dutch director, winner of the 2009 Anim’est Trophy, Erik van Schaaik.