The Anim’est International Animation Film Festival comes to Chișinău!

The Anim’est International Animation Film Festival, the most important of its kind in Romania and one of the largest in Central and Eastern Europe, reaches Chişinău starting of this year! Founded in 2006, Anim'est is the largest film festival in Bucharest, considering the number of spectators and guests, number of movies, theaters and special events. During the first six editions, Anim’est has gathered over 65,000 spectators and projected more than 2,200 animated films (short films, music videos and advertising spots), becoming the most spectacular film festival in Bucharest.

For the last six years, the projections and workshops’ guest animators were: Bill Plymton, John R. Dilworth, Shane Acker (Oscar nominees), Mike Reiss (writer, founder and co-producer of The Simpsons), Georges Schwizgebel, Hayo Freitag, Juan Pablo Zaramella, Joan C. Gratz (Oscar winner), Phil Mulloy, Mirai Mizue, Alexander Damm or the Romanians Ion Truică (selected in the competition at Cannes Festival), Luminiţa Cazacu, Zeno Bogdănescu and Isabela Petraşincu - Anim'est Lifetime Achievement Award winners.

The Anim'est’s mission to revive and promote animation films became perceptible through the awards and participation in film festivals and events in Romania and abroad, obtained by debutant animators in Bucharest Festival competitions.

Between 3 and 6 November 2011, at Odeon Cinema, Anim'est is arranging a special 4 day edition for the Moldavian moviegoers, within they can watch over 50 Romanian, Moldavian and international short and feature films.

Crulic – The Path to Beyond (d. Anca Damian, Romania-Poland, 2011), the 2011 Anim’est opening film in Bucharest, is the first evening’s headline of the Chişinău Festival, Thursday, November 3, from 19 hours. It will be screened in the presence of animators Dan Panaitescu and Dragoş Ştefan and the film’s Polish co-producer, Arkadiusz Wojnarovski. Its worldwide first projection was in the Official Competition at the Locarno International Film Festival, where it obtained a special mention. This feature film tells the story of Claudiu Crulic, a Romanian citizen who died in January 2008 in a prison in Poland, at age 33, three months after a hunger strike, being completely ignored both by the Polish authorities and the Romanian ones. It was transformed into a movie character played by the famous Romanian actor Vlad Ivanov (Polițist, adjectiv / Police, adjective, 4 months, 3 weeks & 2 days, Life Principles), and now Crulic’s story hits the international screens. Anca Damian’s feature film is part of the official selection of prestigious international film festivals, such as those from: Warsaw, Pusan ​​(South Korea), Reykjavik, Cottbus, Jihlava, CPX DOX or BFI London Film Festival.

The schedule includes a wide variety of animated films: from the latest international productions, awarded at important festivals around the world, to archive films from Romania and Republic of Moldova, awarded in recent film festival’s editions. Video & Advertising competitions in Bucharest will also delight people devoted to film and music.

Four days of animated film projections is a first in Chişinău, and they bring not only projections, but also a very dynamic and modern concept. And many, many surprises!