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Palm Springs International Animation Festival Announces Award Winners

‘Loving Vincent’ takes top honors as best animated feature, as festival bestows 35 awards.

‘Loving Vincent’ was awarded best animated feature at the inaugural Palm Springs International Animation Festival. The Palm Springs International Animation Festival (PSIAF) announced the winners of its inaugural awards. The festival, which ran Nov. 9-11 included more than 250 short and six feature-length animated films from over 103 countries, along with panel discussions, seminars and educational programming.

The festival opened with a screening of Loving Vincent, a unique animated film comprised of more than 65,000 hand-painted frames done in Vincent Van Gogh’s unique oil-painting style. The film, from Breakthru Films, won best animated feature and was accompanied by a special demonstration from artists Charlene Mosley and Tiffanie Mang showing how to paint in Van Gogh's style.

Other feature presentations included Bilal: A New Breed of Hero, the first fully Middle Eastern-funded and produced CG-animated film inspired by the story of Bilal Ibn Rabah and Tehran Taboo, a rotoscope-animated feature directed by Iranian-born Ali Soozandeh that explores inhibited existence in Iran through the eyes of four young people, interweaving the sex lives of a prostitute, a male musician and two young women in Tehran.

The first annual PSIAF also featured a robust program of animated short films, exploring a range of methods including hand-drawn 2D animation, watercolor animation, paper cut-outs, hand-painted animation and stop-motion animation, along with other 2D and 3D techniques.

The winners of the first annual PSIAF are:

Best Animated Feature

Loving Vincent

Best Hand Drawn Animated Short

The Potato Eaters

Director: Martin Kukal

Best Watercolor Animated Short

Strange Case

Director: Zbigniew Czapla

Best Paper Animated Short

Tis

Director: Chloë Lesueur

Best Classic and Traditional Animated Short

New York City Sketchbook

Director: William Hartland

Best Hand Painted Animated Short

Yellow Rose

Director: Xin Li

Best Amazing Stop-Motion Animated Short

Tokri

Director: Suresh Eriyat

Best LGBT Animated Short

Fishy

Director: Joe Sulsenti

Best 3D Dark Comedy Animated Short

Afterwork 

Director: Andres Aguilar

Best Abstract Animated Short

Virtual Actors in Chinese Opera

Director: Tobias Gremmler

Best Sand & Salt Animated Short

Angels of the Seashore

Director: Kseniya Slmonova

Best Powerful Dark & Mysterious 3D Animated Short

Citipati 

Director: Andreas Feix

Best Global Issues & Socially Relevant Animated Short

The Neverending Wall

Director: Silvia Carpizo

Best 3D Sci-Fi Fantasy Animated Short

Agent Aiden: The Planet of the Slaves

Director: Martin Lambert and Laurent Beghin

Best VFX and Rotoscoped Animated Short

Mosquito: The Bite of Passage

Director: Brian Vincent Rhodes

Best 3D Drama Animated Short

Weeds

Director: Kevin Hudson

Best Music Video Animated Short

Escape

Director: Brandon Oldenburg

Best Academy of Dream Awards Animated Short

Hide & Shriek

Director: Dani Bowman

Best 3D Fantasy Animated Short

Awaken

Director: Emerson Eagp

Best 2D Childrens Animated Short

New Toy

Director: Rogerio Boechat

Best 2D Action Adventure Animated Short

Salesman Pete 

Director: Marc Bouyer

Best Fun Stop-Motion Animated Short

No-No Wants to Try a Sport

Director: Auvray Mathieu

Best 3D Drama Adventure Animated Short

Geno

Director: Dato Kiknavelidze

Best 2D Drama Animated Short

New Ariadne’s Thread

Director: Claude Luyet

Best Winter Holiday Animated Short

The Christmas Star

Director: Kok Sen Lai

Best Experimental Animated Short

Bi-Polaroid

Director: John Morena

Best 2D Odd and Twisted Animated Short

Dinner for Few

Director: Nassos Vakalis

Best 3D Heartwarming Animated Short

Adija  

Director: Apollonia Thomaier

Best 3D Comedy Animated Short

Voyagers  

Director: Gauthier Ammeux, Valentine Baillon, Benjamin Chaumeny

Best TV Series Animated Short

Paper Girls  

Director: Tone Thyne  

Best 3D Romantic Comedy Animated Short

Tanguito Argentino 

Director: Joaquin Braga  

Best Cool Stop-Motion Animated Short

Ethnophoobia 

Director: Joan Zhonga     

Best 3D Dark Animated Short

Legacy

Director: Guilhem Carayre 

Source: Palm Springs International Animation Festival