More than 350 films from around the globe will screen in and out of competition.
ZAGREB, CROATIA – The lineup has been set for the 28th World Festival of Animated Film – Animafest Zagreb 2018, scheduled to take place from June 4-9 and featuring more than 350 films.
The lineup was presented by the Animafest Artistic Director Daniel Šuljić, producers Paola Orlić and Matea Milić, and a member of the student film competition selection committee, Petra Balekić.
Šuljić said that this year more than 1,800 entries were submitted from 76 countries, a record number in the last several years.
Forty-four titles were selected for the prestigious grand competition for short films, where all the competing films are automatically nominated for the European Animation Award and the winner qualifies directly for the Oscar. The student film competition will screen 46, and the Croatian film competition 18 films. The grand competition and student film competition feature five Croatian films, and the children’s film competition features four.
The list of films can be found online here.
Šuljić remarked on the variety of genres and countries in the grand competition, dominated by films from France, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands and Croatia. He also pointed out some big names as well, many of whom are expected to attend the festival, such as: Oscar-winning partners in art and life David Fine and Alison Snowden, with their film Animal Behaviour; and Ru Kuwahata and Max Porter, with Negative Space.
Animafest 2018 also will screen works by animation celebrities like Georges Schwizgebel, Rosto, Riho Unt, Marta Pajek, Sasha Svirsky and Sawako Kabuki, Ivan Maksimov, Boris Labbé, Xu An and Xi Chen, and Alice Guimarães and Mónica Santos, authors of the animated hit-film Amélia & Duarte, presenting their new work, a crime-comedy noir Between the Shadows.
The noncompetitive program world panorama is screening films by Paul Driessen and Don Hertzfeldt.
In her presentation of the student competition, Balekić announced the winner of this year's award for best animation school goes to CalArts, co-founded by Walt Disney in 1961. As part of its special program, Animafest 2018 will feature a retrospective of Walt Disney, as well as the Belgian Faculty of Fine Arts of the University College Ghent and the Irish Dún Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology.
The visual identity of this year's festival edition was also presented at the conference. The author of the illustration and trailer, Stipan Tadić, revealed that he drew his inspiration from the psychedelic world of the 1960s and the Italian artist Giuseppe Arcimboldo.
Tickets and festival packages are now on sale at the festival’s website.
Source: Animafest Zagreb
Tom McLean has been writing for years about animation from a secret base in Los Angeles.
