Hiroshima Animation Season Coming August 17-21

The Hiroshima International Animation Festival gets new August run, reveals inaugural ‘Golden Carpster’ Award honorees for contributions to animation in Pan-Pacific and Asian regions, and shares The World Competition: Category Award winners.

Hiroshima Animation Season, a renewal of the Hiroshima International Animation Festival, returns in August to the JMS Aster Plaza and other venues in Hiroshima City. Running August 17-21, 2022, the event has three sections - competition, award, and academy.

New this year - The Golden Carpster:

A "Carpster" is a creature familiar to Hiroshima residents and is also the name of a new festival honor this year. The creature combines a carp and a twinkling star and is the mascot of the Hiroshima Animation Season. Artistic director Koji Yamamura designed the character.

The Golden Carpster marks the achievement of a significant contribution made between 2020 to 2021 to the field of animation in the Pan-Pacific and Asia region by an individual, group, or organization within that region. The contribution is based on more than 60 pages of research by more than 20 national and international experts.

First edition winners are:

Kristine Belson (President, Features & Series, Sony Pictures Animation / USA)

  • Award was in recognition of the Introduction of new visual styles in Hollywood animation, including Academy Award-winning Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and Academy Award-nominated The Mitchells vs. the Machines.

Science SARU (Production Studio / Japan)

  • Award was in recognition of the success of Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! and the novel approach to telling history in Inu-oh and The Tale of the Heike.

Joe Hsieh (Animation Director / Taiwan)

  • The award recognized the pursuit of using animation in the horror/suspense genre when producing the animated short Night Bus, which won the Grand Prix in the Short Film Competition at Animafest Zagreb.

Documentary and Experimental Film Center (DEFC) (Production Studio, Festival Management, etc. / Iran)

  • The award recognizes 30 years of continued support of animation expression in Iran, including in the production of The Fourth Wall (directed by Mahboobeh Kalaee), winner of the Grand Prix in the Animation Division of this year’s Japan Media Arts Festival.

Feinaki: Beijing Animation Week (Animation Event / China)

  • The award recognizes efforts to connect the Chinese animation community with the international scene and bring diversity to the expression ecosystem by organizing international animation events and screenings.

Yoriko Mizushiri (Animation Director / Japan)

  • The award is in recognition of being an example to animators in Japan with recent projects such as her VR animation Otawamure and short animation Anxious Body.

The Golden Carpstars winners will be honored on August 17 during the opening ceremony at the Hiroshima Animation Season 2022 with additional celebrations of the winners throughout the festival

The Mitsui Fudosan Realty Chugoku Presents: Hiroshima Animation Season 2022 Competition

The Hiroshima Animation Season 2022 Competition received over 2,149 entries from 86 countries and regions. The competition comprises the “Pan-Pacific and Asia Competition” and the “World Competition;” the latter has five categories for each genre.

The three international jury members for the Pan-Pacific and Asia Competition include:

  • Florence Miailhe (Animation Director/France) winner of last year’s Jury Distinction Annecy International Animation Film Festival for her animated feature The Crossing.
  • Chris Robinson (Author / Canada), Artistic Director of the Ottawa International Animation Festival
  • Joe Hsieh (Animation Director / Taiwan), winner of The Golden Carpster award.

The Pan-Pacific and Asia Competition winners will be announced at the Awards Ceremony on August 21.

The World Competition, Category Award, and Jury’s Personal Pick Award Announced

The World Competition jury (members previously announced) had a pre-jury meeting and chose the Category Award and the Jury’s Personal Pick Award.

The World Competition: Category Award:

Category: “Allegories Nowadays” (for fiction-based films)

  • Category Award: Skinned (Joachim Hérissé/France)
  • Arthur Binard Award: Confessions of an English Ant-Eater (Alex Crumbie/United Kingdom)
  • Hiroko Sebu Award: In the Mountains (Wally Chung/United States)
  • Shizuka Miyazaki Award: Prince in a Pastry Shop (Katarzyna Agopsowicz/Poland)
  • Audience Award: To be determined by audience vote during the festival

Category: “A Slice of Society” (for animated documentaries and films with social issues)

  • Category Award: Salvia at Nine (Jang Nari/Korea)
  • Kiki Sugino Award: The House of Loss (Jinkyu Jeon /Japan, Korea)
  • Asako Fujioka Award: All Those Sensations in My Belly (Marko Dješka/Croatia)
  • Honami Yano Award: Mom, What’s up with the Dog? (Lola Lefevre/France)
  • Audience Award: To be determined by audience vote during the festival

Category: “Adventure in Storytelling” (for films with a unique narrative)

  • Category Award: Darwin’s Notebook (Georges Schwizgebel/Switzerland)
  • Min Tanaka Award: The Blind Writer (Georges Sifianos/Greece)
  • Yuki Harada Award: My Father's Damn Camera (Milos Tomic/Slovenia)
  • Sarina Nihei Award: In the Big Yard Inside the Teeny-weeny Pocket (Yoko Yuki/Japan)
  • Audience Award: To be determined by audience vote during the festival

Category: “Visual Poetry” (for poetic films)

  • Category Award: Archipel (Felix Dufour-Laperriere/Canada)
  • Ma Jung-Yeon Award: Intermission (Réka Bucsi/Hungary)
  • Daito Manabe Award: Clockwise (Toni Mitjanit/Spain)
  • Koji Yamamura Award: Zoon (Jonatan Schwenk/Germany)
  • Audience Award: To be determined by audience vote during the festival

Category: “The Spark: Films for Children”

  • Category Award: A Town Called Panic: The Summer Holidays (Vincent Patar, Stéphane Aubier/France, Belgium)
  • Kotobuki Shiriagari Award: Spinning (Tzu-Hsin Yang (Cindy Yang)/Taiwan)
  • Yukiko Hiromatsu Award: Miranda! - El arte de enamorarte (Dante Zaballa/Argentina) Ryutaro Miyajima Award: In Nature (Marcel Barelli/Switzerland)
  • Audience Award: To be determined by audience vote during the festival

These are not the full line-ups of the award winners for World Competition. Audience Awards will be selected for all categories.

The winning films in both Competitions (Jury Award and Audience Award) will be eligible for the Grand Prix, which will be chosen by the festival's two artistic directors (Koji Yamamura and Shizuka Miyazaki).

Check out the "Hiroshima Animation Season 2022" trailer:

Additional information is available on the event website.

Source: Hiroshima International Animation Festival

Debbie Diamond Sarto's picture

Debbie Diamond Sarto is news editor at Animation World Network.