This year's festival poster was designed by Croatia's Kresimir Zimonic.

From June 18 — 23, 2002 Zagreb will hold its 15th World Festival of Animated Films and is expecting a grand turn out for its 30 year anniversary. The festival is going to begin with a celebration in Zagreb's "Flowers Square," which will serve as a reunion for the people that have attended and supported the festival throughout the past thirty years. While the last few years have been difficult for Zagreb due to the war and Annecy's decision to go annual, this year it appears that Zagreb is back in full force and offering a number of exciting opportunities for festival attendees. "The festival is hot this year," says leading U.S. independent Bill Plympton, "It has a great buzz around it."

Jury member and first time Zagreb participant, Linda Simensky, Cartoon Network's vice president of original animation, agrees, "A surprise has been the number of Americans attending. With Zagreb happening so close to Annecy, most people had to make a decision about which festival to attend."

In addition to a rich, varied competitive program of films, Zagreb has a number of rare retrospectives and special screenings, new awards, a Flash animation workshop and even a chance for everyone to contribute a birthday card to the festival.

Greeting card by Georges Sifianos.

The Films
978 submitted entries were weeded through by Rada Sesic, a Croatian filmmaker and film critic, Witold Nowak, director of Sweden's Eksjo's Animation School and David Ehrlich, an American independent filmmaker and educator. (David Ehrlich has written an essay on selection, which is currently posted on http://asifa.net. There you can also read interviews with the festival's program and managing directors.) Due to the large number of entries — over five thousand and three hundred minutes of programming — the screening time for the official competition grew from 480 minutes to 540, out of the goodness of beloved festival director's Margit Antauer's heart.

As a result, the jury will have their hands full deciding the winners. The official competition jury is: Oksana Cherkasova (Russia), Joanna Quinn (Great Britain), Linda Simensky (USA), Georges Lacroix (France) and Edo Lukman (Croatia). Simensky says, "It seems that the festival has pulled together a selection that truly represents international animation. Plus, the jury looks to be as diverse as the film selection, and that will make the discussions challenging. Everyone always expects me (as an American) to have typical American taste, which I guess in this case, would be defined as liking funny films. Perhaps they'll be surprised. I am also curious to see if there are many political films in this festival. Over the last few years, I have noticed fewer political films out there, but the ones that were political often came from Croatia."

Of the films selected the largest number come from the United States with fourteen films in official competition; however Russia with six films, Canada with eight entries and the U.K with nine are other strong nations. Of the 85 films in competition, though, a wide range of countries are represented including Iran, Mexico, Slovenia and -- with three films in competition -- home town favorite, Croatia. Fifty-three films are in the student competition and here France is clearly the leader with an amazing 12 entries. Great Britain is next with eight. Now the numbers get more engaging with four student entries each for Bulgaria, India and Korea. The selection committee awarded the Marble Z Trophy for the best selection of student films submitted to the festival to the Seoul Animation Center in South Korea. The diversity of the student screenings should make for some unusual viewing. The jury for the student competition is: Gyorgy Elekes (Hungary), Nevenka Fiser (Croatia), Barbel Neubauer (Germany) and Monique Renault (Netherlands).