Cinanima Festival 2025 Report: A Festival That Reinvented Itself

Once again, I was in Espinho, Portugal, to record the best national and international moments and highlights from the Cinanima Festival 2025 edition (7-16 November 2025).

Although I could only spend three days at the festival this year, those days were packed with fascinating discoveries and visual delights. Cinanima once again overflowed with energy, offering workshops, exhibitions, and a lively celebration of the 30th anniversary of 'Estória do Gato e da Lua'/'The Story of the Cat and the Moon' by Pedro Serrazina, complete with book launches and attractions I sadly had to miss. I managed to attend two of the three international student sessions, two feature films, two international short film sessions, and two more sessions of Portuguese short films. The session on Portuguese projects is always a must for me, as it offers a panorama into the future of national animation.

I also dipped into the 'Animation Pro - An international community of animation students,' which kicked off my festival experience this year. It's an online course from 'Ars Animation School,' by the Spanish-Mexican Oscar De Santillana, which offers online animation classes with teams participating in a series of masterclasses and interactive activities in various languages. It's a way to promote and spread the art to places where it would be otherwise impossible.

International student animation competition

The competition presented a quality equal to or better than that of the professionals. It's not a question of quality, it's a question of how the narrative is presented. In this case, I highlight:

• 'Void Spaces' (Marta Koch, Poland, 2024, drawing on paper) is a very dense animation. Its drawings align with the therapy the character undergoes, water, emotions, and difficult situations the character experiences. And how all of this is shown on screen. It's very interesting and worth watching.
• 'Death's Speak' (Willy Fair, United Kingdom, 2025, puppets), a wonderful stop-motion film, is autobiographical and tells the story of a man who unearths his brother to take him on a journey. It's a cathartic process, dealing with feelings of guilt, longing, and the loss of a loved one. A very well-animated work, well worth watching. It's truly excellent.
• 'Where Memories Live' (Florencia de la Maza, Matías Yunge, Chile, 2025, photos, cut-outs, animated objects). This stop-motion film is very intriguing. How directors managed to convey the issue of memory and recollection through images and movement is fascinating. It's also dense and reminded me a bit of 'Wolf’s House' (2018), another Chilean animation.
• 'A Tale For Mohsen' (Mojtaba Taraki, Iran, 2024, 2D and 3D Computer) tells the story of a boy who wishes he had stories to tell his friends, but he doesn't. It sounds like a silly theme, but it's well-developed narratively and aesthetically, which is simple. The colors are flat, but there's a sensible use of shadow. And where does this boy's drama? Once again, Iran is showing its strength in animation with a moving film.
• 'Urban Duo' (Hongyu Yue, China, 2024, Clay, 3D). The short addresses an important issue today: the contrast between civilized life in big cities and a more natural life. Through a father-son relationship and a simple game of cubes to be aligned, the film depicts an effort to organize life's elements. It is a clever and symbolic animation that, through the shapes and images, prompts viewers to think, encouraging reflection on our own lives. Visually, it’s flawless.

Where Memories Live

Short film competition

Of the two sessions I attended, the films that caught my attention were:

• 'Ira' (Rozenn Busson, France, 2024, Paint on Glass), a very feminine animation, a painting on glass, very well done and crafted, where she portrays anger, that which consumes us from within, like a volcano. Everything is in warm colors, darker colors, trying to represent this complex and uncontrollable feeling: in the figure of a woman. Despite this heavy theme, the film shows a positive side, presenting a different ending.
• 'Sequencial' (Bruno Caetano, France, Italy, Poland, Portugal, 2025, puppets, 2D) was also shown in the Portuguese film session. What caught my attention was its autobiographical context about the author's childhood and how he faced certain situations throughout his life. He used stop motion and drawings to show how he dealt with them internally. These parts, the author's own unconscious, are the high point of the animation.
• 'Because today is Saturday' (Alice Eça Guimarães, Portugal, France, Spain, 2025, 2D). It's a wonderful reflection on how women are pressured from all sides, even by the people who love them most. It tells of a mother who has to take care of everybody but never herself. In fact, this is a portrait of perhaps 99.999% of women. This is very well portrayed with an aesthetically metaphorical symbolic design. With an ending common to the vast majority of women. Its director has emerged as one of the voices in favor of women in Portuguese cinema. In my view, she should have won the main prize.
• 'Dog Ear' (Péter Vácz, Hungary, 2025, 2D Computer). It was exhibited just after 'Because Today is Saturday', which was significant since it seemed to show the son's side. The film tells the story of a boy who stays home alone. And he has only a puppy for company, who is at the same time his guardian, his protector, his tormentor, and his victim. Made in 2D animation and 3D, it was very well done, with a well-crafted script, full of meaning, and it makes us think about the condition of childhood.

Dog Ear

International feature film competition

The two films I had the opportunity to watch were exactly the two award-winning films. And they really are wonderful.

• 'Memory Hotel' (Heinrich Sabl, France, Germany, 2024, digital, stop motion, puppets)is a stop-motion and very finely animated film with a dramatic story. It talks about the end of WW II, the Iron Curtain, the collapse of the Soviet Union, Nazism, and metaphorically shows how it has perpetuated over the years, until and after the fall of the Berlin Wall. It's difficult to describe. You need to watch the film, and it's essential to have at least a basic understanding of what happened after WWII to fully get all the nuances and metaphors. It deserved the award.
• 'Perikan Blue' (László Csáki, Hungary, 2023, 2D Computer). Coincidentally, it is also about Eastern Europe. The film tells the story of a group that wanted to travel and started forging train tickets. And how this continued over time. It's a true story, a documentary. The animation is simple, a bit trashy, with a well-constructed script that alternates between moments from the past and the present, and includes statements from people who participated in this story. It's interesting how animation gives shape to this surreal story, since animation is the universe of impossible things.

Memory Hotel at Cinanima Festival

Portuguese film competition

Besides those already mentioned:

• 'Dog Alone' (Marta Reis Andrade, Portugal, 2025, 2D) won the main prize in the competition (all the winners of the 2025 Cinanima Festival). It's a good animation with design and the way they used the colors: black and beige, with expressive shades of gray. It shows a parallel between the grandfather and this lonely dog, who stays next to the house where the director's grandfather lives. It's somewhat biographical, like the majority of Portuguese films.

Portuguese animation projects

Three stand out:

• 'Old Clothes' (Prod. Os Filmes do Pinguim), again by Alice Essa Guimarães, which, once again, addresses the condition of women, but now, an older one. Again, it is a mix of animated techniques, mainly pixilation and objects. Alice tells, through a Christmas, the story of this older woman who carries the family history. More of a film that speaks about the female condition.

Old Clothes

• 'Leonor & Benjamin' (Prod. Sardinha em Lata, Humberto Santana, Pedro Brito) is an animated feature film that addresses a dark moment in the country's history through the romance of two teenagers. The Lisbon Pogrom or the Easter Massacre of 1506 was a time when thousands of Jews were killed by the people. Aesthetically, it is very objective, already presenting all this defined graphic part, with extensive historical, architectural, and clothing research, so that the film is both attractive and connected to the reality of that time. The film is innovative because it also has a documentary character, and is a musical-opera. It's based on a real opera. I consider a relevant theme for nowadays, with radicalism everywhere, especially in Portugal, where xenophobia is growing frighteningly and violently. So, this film is very important in every sense, and it seems to have all the attributes to be a great success.
• 'Beca the Cow' (Prod. Oh! Multimedia, Marie-Anne Bonneterre). It's an animated series project, directed by a Frenchwoman married to José Manuel-Xavier, a Portuguese animator. The cartoon's charm is aimed at a children's audience and tells the story of a cow who doesn't want to be a cow. So, just the premise is already intriguing. It works a lot with one of the animated principles: seduction.

To Gaza with Love

Another noteworthy action by Cinanima I have to mention was the screening of animations made for the project, 'To Gaza with Love: A Global Anijam' (created by AC4Pal, which was created to support the work of Haneen Koraz, for details, read our interview), an initiative spearheaded by Joanna Quinn. One of these animations was shown before the short film sessions. May other festivals join this wave of solidarity and protest against atrocities unthinkable in the 21st century.

Well, next year will be the 50th anniversary of Cinanima. Let's wait for a great commemoration!

Cinanima Festival 2025 Closing Ceremony 

Read also: Our coverage of Cinanima Festival 

contributed by: Eliane Gordeeff

Cinanima Festival photos: Cláudio Roberto

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