Hayao Miyazaki and Michel Gondry in the Anim'est 2014 programme

The audience coming to the cinema for the ninth edition of Anim'est (3-12 October) is invited to write down the name of their favorite film. The Audience Award will be offered to one of the 37 animated shorts screened in our special section - Animash - which reunites, outside the competitive categories of the festival, a series of excellent animated films that were selected and awarded at important international festivals.

In addition to short films, some of the latest animated feature films the audience has been anxiously waiting for will premiere in Bucharest and complete the Animash section. In the opening of the ninth edition of the festival and for the first time in South-Eastern Europe, the Anim’est audience is invited to take part in the screening of The Boxtrolls (dir. Graham Annable, Anthony Stacchi), the newest feature of the famous American studio Laika. Kazetachinu /The Wind Rises is sure to be another highlight of this section. It is the work of the famous Oscar winning Japanese director Hayao Miyazaki, who announced in the fall of last year that it would be his last feature animation. A fictionalized biography of Jiro Horikoshi, one of the most innovative and accomplished aeronautical designers in the world, the animation won the Tokyo Anime Award in 2014 (the most prestigious award for animation in Japan), and was nominated for the Oscar in the best animated feature film category, as well as for the Golden Globe as the best film in a foreign language.

Other feature films will be screened outside of Anim'est’s competitive section having toured major festivals such as Annecy, Ottawa, Anima Mundi, Animfest Zagreb, Berlin or Fantoche. From Brazil comes Atéque a Sbórnianossepare / Until Sbornia do us apart, the 2D animation which won the Audience Award at the São Paulo festival last year, and which shows what happens to a small and peaceful country named Sbórnia when the wall that separates it from the rest of the world falls. The adventurous journey of a bunny following in his mother's footsteps is narrated in Beyond Beyond, a Sweden-Denmark co-production directed by Esben Toft Jacobsen. Two other feature films come from Japan: BLOOD-C: The Last Dark (dir. ShiotaniNaoyoshi), the bloodiest animation in this section and the final manga in the "Blood" series that narrates the adventures of the heroine Saya, and Koto no ha no Niwa / Garden of Words (dir. Makoto Shinkai), the animation that won the AniMovie award for best feature film in Stuttgart tells the mysterious story of Takao, a young man who dreams of becoming a shoe designer, and Yukino, a woman much older than him. In this category we will also screen Jack et la mécanique du coeur / The Boy with the Cuckoo-Clock Heart (dir. Mathias Malzieu, StéphaneBerl), a 3D animation about Jack, whose heart was replaced at birth, on the coldest day there ever was in Scotland, with a cuckoo clock and Minuscule - La valléedes Fourmisperdues / Minuscule: Valley of the Lost Ants, a French 3D animation directed by Thomas Szabo and Helene Giraud, about a ladybird accidentally caught in a war between the black ants and the red ants.

The series of feature films outside the competition reaches its peak on Saturday 11^thOctober, at 8.00 p.m. at Cinema Studio with Is the Man Who Is Tall Happy? An animated conversation with Noam Chomsky, the animated documentary in which the imagination and creativity of the director Michel Gondry, the man behind the much-beloved ludic imaginary displayed in works such as La Science des Rêves or Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, are put in the service of the intellectual rigor of Noam Chomsky, the famous American linguist and philosopher. Through a series of 2D animated conversations, drawn almost entirely in a naive and complex style that has become Gondry’s special trademark, the audience gains access to Chomsky’s unique and overwhelming memory, logic and scientific and historic knowledge.

Stéphane Aubier and Vincent Patar, the authors of the beloved animation Ernest and Celestine which opened the 2013 edition of Anim’est, directed Buche de Noël / A Town Called Panic: The Christmas Log, one of the Animash short films that will make it difficult for the audience to decide upon just one film in this section. Another visual delight of the section is Marilyn Myller, a stop motion animation awarded at Sundance, SXSW and Chicago Film Festival, directed by Mikey Please and a sequel to his BAFTA winning short film, The Eagleman Stag.

Other titles that might tip the scales are Hasta Santiago (dir. Mauro Carraro), a Switzerland-France co-production awarded at Annecy, Warsaw and Animatou, and winner of the Jean-Luc Xiberras award for best debut in 2013, or Through the Hawthorn (dir. Anna Benner, Pia Borg, Gemma Burditt), a UK animation showing a therapy session among a psychiatrist, a schizophrenic patient and his mother, it won the Grand Prix in Stuttgart and it was screened at Clermont-Ferrand, Animafest Zagreb, Anima Mundi, SICAF and Hiroshima. Those who love the animations of yore might resonate with the Swiss animationFrom Here to Immortality, directed by Luise Hüsler, in which the two former cartoon stars - Thomas the cat and Jeremiah the mouse - agree to give an interview after many years of silence, while fans of the famous series Courage theCowardly Dog will enjoy watching once again the sweet fearful dog in 3D in The Fog of Courage, directed by the famous John R. Dilworth who was a guest here in Bucharest at the first edition of Anim'est and two years later. Another film that might just conquer the heats of the Anim’est audience is the Polish production Do sercatwego / To Thy Heart (dir. Ewa Borysewicz), a paper drawing animation selected in this year’s Berlin Film Festival competition, which depicts a love story unfolding in an urban neighborhood.

The Audience Award offered at the ninth edition of Anim’est International Animation Film Festival is provided by ArCuB and is worth 500 euros.

The tickets for individual screenings can be purchased on www.eventbook.ro.

The ticket price is 13 lei.