The 15th Stuttgart Festival of Animated Film has just taken place over six exciting days from May 1-6, showing wonderfully varied animation films and programs to a highly appreciative audience. As the second largest international animation festival, and this year screening about 500 films in total, it is also a meeting place for animation professionals from all over the world.

The animation film screenings, presentations, workshops, events and the prestigious animation competitions reflect an increasingly wide range of creative work produced within an expanding and innovative industry.

With 190 films in competition, the winners have just been announced at the festival's Award Ceremony taking place on May 6 at 8 p.m. in Stuttgart, with the animation directors present and some flew in on the day to receive their award. The films have screened to full houses of festival attendees including animation professionals, students, international guests as well as the general public and animation enthusiasts.

This year's Grand Prix winner FRANZ KAFKA'S A COUNTRY DOCTOR by Koji Yamamura (Japan) tells a surreal tale of a country doctor on a night visit, who fails to locate a fatal wound due to his personal preoccupations. Using traditional cel techniques, its line and drawing textures enhance the animation's dreamlike quality and shifts of reality/surreality.

The official award winners and the jury's statements are:

International Competition

Jury: Suzanne Buchan, London, Ron Diamond, Hollywood, Vladimir Lesciov, Riga, Joanna Quinn, London, Fritz Steingrobe, Hamburg.

Grand Prix: State of Baden-Wuerttemberg And City Of Stuttgart Grand Award For Animated Film (15,000 Euros):

FRANZ KAFKA INAKA ISHA (FRANZ KAFKA'S A COUNTRY DOCTOR)
by Koji Yamamura
Japan 2007. Producers: Mariko Seto, Fumi Teranishi. Production: Yamamura Animation, Shochiku. World sales: Shochiku Co.
The film's exquisite, distorting forms and spaces successfully release a subconscious world from darkness into a waking absurdity.

Honorable mention:

ENERGIE (ENERGY)
by Thorsten Fleisch
Germany 2007. Production: Fleischfilm
In the blink of an eye, we witness the exquisite capture of brilliant uncontrolled electricity. The film's montage expands the experience of subjective perception and also notions of animated form. Conceptually it is simultaneously connected to the period of 20s classic Avantgarde.

International Promotion Award / Award For Best Graduation Film (10,000 Euros):

CAMERA OBSCURA
by Matthieu Buchalski, Jean-Michel Drechsler, Thierry Onillon
France 2007. Production: Supinfocom Valenciennes. World sales: Premium Films
For its retro-elegant design and totemistic figures that enable the film's sensitive insight into a poignant, apparently isolated existence.

Honorable mention:

MILK TEETH
by Tibor Banoczki
U.K. 2007. Producer: Anna Higgs. Production: National Film and Television School
For its respectful unfolding of childhood terrors and coming of age in stylistically honed, bleakly emotional aural and visual landscapes.

Special Award: Music For Animation (5,000 Euros, sponsored by the GEMA Foundation):

HEZURBELTZAK, UNA FOSA COMUN (HEZURBELTZAK, A COMMON GRAVE)
by Iziben Onederra
Spain 2007. Producer: Pello Gutierrez. World sales: Kimuak
The sound collage mirrors the drawing's artistic idiosyncracy in an emotional and generative way. In the wilderness of electronically generated sounds lies the cacophony of a world defined by avarice, lust, power and madness.

Young Animation

Jury: Signe Baumane, New York/Riga, Hanna Nordholt, Hamburg, Theodore Ushev, Montreal

Award For Best Student Film (2,500 Euros, sponsored by the Landesanstalt fur Kommunikation Baden-Wurttemberg):

1977
by Peque Varela
U.K. 2007. Producer: Gavin Humphries / National Film and Television School