For the 2023 edition, the Annecy International Animation Film Festival received more than 3200 entries from 100+ countries.

37 animation shorts proceed to the official short competition. Among those, we find films by Flóra Anna Buda (27), Joseph Wallace (Salvation Has No Name). The much-expected film by Daria Kashcheeva 'Electra' will also screen at the festival, as well as the new film by Swiss veteran Georges Schwizgebel, 'D'une peinture à l'autre'.

The off-limits shorts competitive section features 7 films, and the Perspectives section includes 19 animation shorts; among them, the last part of the trilogy 'Money and Happiness' by Ana Nedeljkovic and Nikola Madjak Jr.

8 films comprise the Shorts for Young Audiences competition; Dina Velikovskaya and her 'Prinzessin Aubergine' is one of them.

The full lineup:

 
Short Films in Competition Official

11, Director: JEVREMOVIC Vuk / Countries: Croatia, Germany
Synopsis: Three masterful footballers. They can perform wonders during a match and score impossible goals, but what goes on in their heads when they are about to take a penalty kick?

27, Director: BUDA Flóra Anna / Countries: Hungary, France
Synopsis: Alice is 27 years old today. Although she feels oppressed because she still lives with her parents, she spends her time daydreaming to escape her dreary everyday life.

Astoria / Director: DION Franck / Countries: France
Synopsis: An astronomer is overwhelmed by the ramifications of her research and goes into exile.

Box Cutters, Director: VAN NIEKERK Naomi Classien / Countries: South Africa, Netherlands, France
Synopsis: A young woman recalls a day when she was attacked by three men on her way home, but daily life must resume its course.

Carne de Dios, Director: PLAZA Patricio Gabriel / Countries: Argentina, Mexico
Synopsis: In 17th century Mexico, an ailing Christian priest needs to endure the native rituals in his own body that he was actually persecuting.

Catisfaction, Director: ALMEIDA André / Countries: Portugal
Synopsis: A man and a cat. It's about relationships and how they can shape our life forever. It's also about a weird character and his cat who claims his way to eternity.

Ce qui bouge est vivant, Director: MARSILY Noémie / Countries: Belgium
Synopsis: While slugs slither aimlessly across the kitchen floor, Noémie composes a moving and fragmented self-portrait, on the fringes between intimacy and the world’s hubbub.

Christopher at Sea, Director: BROWN Tom CJ / Countries: United States, France, United Kingdom
Synopsis: Christopher embarks on a transatlantic voyage as a passenger on a cargo ship. His hopes of finding out what lures so many men to sea sets him on a journey into solitude, fantasy and obsession.

Daug Geresnis, Director: JAKAITE Skirmanta / Countries: Lithuania
Synopsis: A man is waiting for test results. He expects the worst but at the same time hopes for the best. Distressed and afraid he spends a week in a limbo of his own creation, neither here nor there, dreading what the outcome might be.

Drijf, Director: STOOPS Levi / Countries: Belgium
Synopsis: Two people adrift at sea are fighting a bloody battle for both their survival and their relationship.

D'une peinture à l'autre, Director: SCHWIZGEBEL Georges / Countries: Switzerland, France
Synopsis: An immersion into art through two paintings on the same subject created half a century apart.

Eeva, Director: TSINAKOV Morten, MRZLJAK Lucija / Countries: Croatia, Estonia
Synopsis: It's pouring down with rain at the funeral. There's a lot of crying, too much wine, several woodpeckers and a couple of dreams that fill in the gaps.

Electra, Director: KASHCHEEVA Daria / Countries: Czech Republic, France, Slovakia
Synopsis: Electra thinks back to her 10th birthday, mixing memories with dreams and hidden fantasies. Is our memory just fiction? Or is it a myth?

Grandma, I Miss You, Director: LIU Maoning / Countries: China
Synopsis: When I was young, I took care of my elderly grandmother. I found money hidden in my grandmother’s wheelchair, and I stole some. That was my only secret I kept after my grandma passed away.

Haljina za finale, Director: MESTROVIC Martina / Countries: Croatia
Synopsis: One day, my granny dyed her wedding dress black. She wanted to be buried in it.

Humo, Director: BASULTO Rita / Countries: Mexico
Synopsis: A boy, Daniel, travels by train towards a dark destination known as the smokehouse.

I'm Hip, Director: MUSKER John / Countries: United States
Synopsis: A self-absorbed cat, in a jazzy song and dance, proudly and comically proclaims his "hipness" to the world. The world is less convinced than he is.

Intersextion, Director: REEVES Richard R. / Countries: Canada
Synopsis: Two abstract energies fall in love, unite as one and disappear into a vanishing point.

Koerkorter, Director: TENDER Priit / Countries: Estonia
Synopsis: Misfortune deported a ballet dancer Sergei to a suburban kolkhoz. Here, he's having his mundane battles against routine, domestic animals and alcohol.

La Grande Arche, Director: AUTHOUART Camille / Countries: France
Synopsis: With nearly 70 monumental works of art scattered throughout the district, La Défense in Paris is Europe's largest open-air museum. Sitting between the legs of the gigantic Red Spider, I wonder how I hadn’t noticed them before?

La perra, Director: MELO GAMPERT Carla / Countries: Colombia, France
Synopsis: In Bogota, a bird-girl leaves behind the family home, her domineering mother and faithful dog to go and explore her sexuality.

La Saison pourpre, Director: BOUCHEREAU Clémence / Countries: France
Synopsis: On an island at the edge of the mangrove, girls live in tune with the climate.

Last Order, Director: JO Hangjin / Countries: South Korea
Synopsis: A pizza guy goes on a late-night delivery to a suburban apartment. Despite long flights of stairs, room 1601 is nowhere to be found. Instead, he is left with grim, mysterious illusions and traces.

L'Ombre des papillons, Director: EL KHYARI Sofia / Countries: France, Portugal, Qatar
Synopsis: In a mysterious forest, a woman is slowly lured into a nostalgic daydream as she observes the butterflies.

Love Me True, Director: SEDAN Inés / Countries: France
Synopsis: Laurence is desperately looking for love. Following a friend’s advice, she connects to online dating sites to find her soulmate. She becomes addicted to her phone and addicted to a toxic man.

Marie.Eduardo.Sophie, Director: CORRIVEAU Thomas / Countries: Canada
Synopsis: A mesmerising contemplation of moving bodies and painting, with three magnificent contemporary dance performers from Montreal, Marie Mougeolle, Eduardo Ruiz Vergara and Sophie Corriveau.

Maurice's Bar, Director: PREZMAN Tom, EDERY Tzor / Countries: France
Synopsis: In 1942, on a train to nowhere, a former drag queen remembers a night from her past in one of Paris’ first gay bars. Remnants of customer gossip recall this mythic bar and its mysterious Jewish-Algerian owner.

Nun or Never, Director: JÄÄLINOJA Heta / Countries: Finland
Synopsis: A nun digs a man out of the ground and loses her grip on everyday life. Can secrets and harmony coexist?

Our Uniform, Director: MOGHADDAM Yegane / Countries: Iran
Synopsis: An Iranian girl unfolds her school memories through the wrinkles and fabrics of her old uniform. She admits that she's nothing but a "female" and explores the roots of this idea in her school years.

Regular Rabbit, Director: DUFFY Eoin / Countries: Ireland
Synopsis: The good name of a seemingly regular rabbit falls victim to an unstoppable tide of disinformation.

Salvation Has No Name, Director: WALLACE Joseph / Countries: United Kingdom, France, Czech Republic
Synopsis: A troupe of clowns gather to perform a story about a Priest and a refugee but as their misguided tale unfolds, the boundaries between fiction and reality begin to fray.

Sweet Like Lemons, Director: JOKELA Jenny / Countries: Finland, United Kingdom
Synopsis: A visual reflection on getting out of a harmful relationship and moving on.

Telsche, Director: COLFER Sophie, NUNU Ala / Countries: Poland, Saudi Arabia, Portugal
Synopsis: On the vast salt flats under dark clouds, a hole in the ground swallows the memory of a woman that Telsche longs to see again.

The Miracle, Director: DEUTZ Nienke / Countries: Belgium, France, Netherlands
Synopsis: The Miracle, a place where the sun always shines, there’s endless opportunities to relax and food is in abundance.

The Smile, Director: VAN SCHAAIK Erik / Countries: Netherlands, Belgium
Synopsis: When a world-famous film star is accused of eating his female co-stars, his career goes down the drain. That wipes the smile off his face!

Tongue, Director: YOSHIDA Kaho / Countries: Canada, Japan
Synopsis: Tired of being talked at by men, a woman decides to liberate his tongue.

World to Roam, Director: IRWIN Stephen / Countries: United Kingdom
Synopsis: Mother and Father lay the child in his cot at the same time every night. However, come morning, only a shallow crater remains – a baby-shaped depression. The boy was destined to be a wanderer.

Electra

Short Films Off-Limits in Competition

Algodreams, Director: TODOROVIC Vladimir / Countries: Australia
Synopsis: Algodreams are created by prompting AI systems to dream about the future of life on planet Earth. Their stories, animations and sounds are shaped by numbers, predictions and mathematical models.

Cave Painting, Director: FRUHAUF Siegfried A. / Countries: Austria
Synopsis: In Siegfried Fruhauf’s dream-like etude, human traces from an unimaginably distant past appear as an intensified vision of the origin of painting.

Das feine Zirpen einer Dunkelziffer, Director: SEBERT Vera / Countries: Austria
Synopsis: Like a single film frame, insects flash for a fraction of a second, only to immediately withdraw from the field of vision again.

I Can't Go on Like This by Aria Covamonas from Planet Earth, Director: COVAMONAS Aria / Countries: Mexico
Synopsis: Some individuals tell their gloomy stories and then transform into something horrible.

Is Heaven Blue? #2, Director: DE NOOIJER Menno, DE NOOIJER Paul / Countries: Norway, Netherlands
Synopsis: What was young gets old, what was healthy is sick. Uncertainty has crept in. What started out tough ends in melancholy. In that sense, this is a farewell.

Motus, Director: FERNANDES Nelson / Countries: Portugal
Synopsis: Motus: a body in motion. A stop-motion animation where conception, degradation and regeneration cohabit in a unique way. A creation on a metal sheet using ethanol as the raw material.

The Transient, Director: PINK TWINS / Countries: Finland
Synopsis: What is The Transient? It is that fleeting moment when you question what you are seeing when the uncanny valley takes over and when harmonious wildlife is revealed as an obsessive manipulation of nature.

Is Heaven Blue? #2

Short Films Perspectives in Competition

Bai, Director: CHEN Ao / Countries: China, United Kingdom
Synopsis: A big-headed baby, one of the numerous victims of the white melamine-tainted milk powder incidents caused by the Sanlu (Three Deer) Group Co. Ltd in China, sinks into the abyss of horror and despair.

Baigal Nuur – Lake Baikal, Director: TELENGUT Alisi / Countries: Germany, Canada
Synopsis: The formation and history of Lake Baikal in Siberia are reimagined, featuring the voice of a Buryat woman who can still recall some words in her endangered Buryat-Mongolian language.

Depersonalization, Director: YORDANOV Spartak / Countries: Bulgaria
Synopsis: An interpretation about personality loss. The tree grows and buries its crown back in the earth, the world returns to primal matter, the consumer is consumed.

Fashion Victims 2.0, Director: LORENZO HERNÁNDEZ Maria / Countries: Spain
Synopsis: An inconvenient truth – the Western fashion industry is based on forced child labor in the Third World. Will you still consent to it?

Hadis, Director: AGHAMALIYEVA Nazrin / Countries: Azerbaijan, United States, Czech Republic
Synopsis: In a world ruled by crows and discrimination, a young girl decides to fight for justice.

Island, Director: FAUST Michael / Countries: Israel
Synopsis: This recounts the history of a small, secluded island over the course of several millennia, to reveal a telling lesson about human nature.

K8, Director: ANAYA BORJA Miguel / Countries: Mexico
Synopsis: The impact of drug trafficking on society has many facets: some of them are shown in this short film using animated charcoal drawings on wood.

Kaadina Jeevantike, Director: RAO Nandini, RAO Nirupa, SANGHVI Kalp / Countries: India
Synopsis: A little girl stumbles into a sacred grove near her village in South India. She disturbs the spirit of the forest, who takes her on an adventure to illuminate the origins of this ancient swampland.

Lost at Sea, Director: BARTOS AMORY Andrés Alejandro, STOJEVIC Lucija / Countries: Spain
Synopsis: A Rohingya man is stranded in the Andaman Sea on a fishing boat loaded with men, women and children fleeing for their lives. He is haunted by the song his mother sang him. Why did he have to escape?

Money and Happiness, Director: NEDELJKOVIC Ana, MAJDAK JR. Nikola / Countries: Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia
Synopsis: The hamsters live and work in Hamsterland, which is a perfect state with a perfect economy. The GDP grows steadily, there is no unemployment and 100% of the population declare themselves to be happy.

Nurit, Director: TAL Sohoni / Countries: Israel
Synopsis: Nurit walks us through her journey into motherhood, which begins with a silent birth, continues to fertility treatments, and ends up with fixing the Eilat cemetery, where she finds closure.

O cacto, Director: KUMP Ricardo / Countries: Brazil
Synopsis: A man finds himself paralyzed in a remote and hostile environment after an accident. His situation takes on new directions as he accepts his new reality.

Saleeg, Director: BAWYAN Afnan / Countries: Saudi Arabia
Synopsis: A grandmother living amongst strangers must confront her stubbornly independent nature when she accidentally causes a pot of boiling rice to overflow, which turns into a flood threatening her house.

Shanghai Zhi Chun, Director: XUN Sun / Countries: China
Synopsis: Initially, on 1st April 2022, the Shanghai government asked people to stay at home in quarantine for five days, but it reneged on its promise and the city closed for two months. Sun Xun was also quarantined in a hotel. Everyone was unprepared.

Sjeti se kako sam jahala bijelog konja, Director: BOSNJAK VOLDA Ivana, JOHNSON VOLDA Thomas / Countries: Croatia
Synopsis: Time continuously elapses, and apathy can trap consciousness into a loop. Escaping this stagnation one can discover the true beauty of existence.

The Crowd, Director: KIRCA Pelin / Countries: Turkey
Synopsis: The crowd is untruth.

To You, Director: LAZHARI Wafa / Countries: Tunisia
Synopsis: Old, dark memories are drawn onto stardust. Either I condemn you, or I free you from your agony.

Trasiego, Director: WOOLRICH Amanda / Countries: Mexico, Canada
Synopsis: A conversation between a grandmother and her granddaughter through their notebooks and landscape sketches discussing four themes: death, migration, memory and expression.

Where Is the Key?, Director: SPROGE Indra / Countries: Latvia
Synopsis: Seeking a way out of depression, Lara tries using other people’s experiences, but she only finds the key when she finds a real connection to herself.

Remember How I Used to Ride A White Horse

Short Films Young Audiences in Competition

Colocation sauvage, Director: MERCAT-JUNOT Armelle / Countries: France
Synopsis: A starry-eyed goat decides to build a cabin in the jungle to live there, but this means she’ll be sharing with some dangerous neighbours. The goat manages to make new friends, but it comes at a heavy price.

Entre deux sœurs, Director: CÉARD Clément, GOUSSET Anne-Sophie / Countries: France
Synopsis: Being sisters means sharing a special bond, laughing together and being driven by love. But these particular sisters share an extra something else, and that’s just fine.

Harvey, Director: NADEAU Janice / Countries: Canada, France
Synopsis: Told through the eyes of a child with an overflowing imagination, this is a poetic, luminous look at bereavement and coping with the loss of a parent.

Paperplanes, Director: JEENA Arvind Singh / Countries: India
Synopsis: A noisy, hyper-mischievous classroom of 4th graders are caught off-guard as the teacher walks in unannounced, which is followed by a surprise test of creativity and character.

Pete, Director: PARKER Bret / Countries: United States
Synopsis: Based on a true story about gender identity, Little League Baseball, the people who inspire change, and the superheroes who allow that change to happen.

Prinzessin Aubergine, Director: VELIKOVSKAYA Dina / Countries: Germany
Synopsis: A king and a queen have almost everything, but something is missing. Desperate as they are, they search for the perfect seed to grow a child, but the only thing flourishing is their garden.

The Goose, Director: MÍKA Jan / Countries: France, Czech Republic
Synopsis: A boy fantasizes about becoming a famous footballer, playing in big stadiums, but first he has to win a match in a small backyard playing against a goose.

Wat zit er in die kist?, Director: ALGOED Bram / Countries: Belgium
Synopsis: "What's in the box?" wondered the captain, bus driver and postman as they transported their cargo. The journey takes them overland, across the sea and in the air before the secret is revealed.

Princess Aubergine

The Annecy 2023 Official Selection is carried out by the Artistic Director, Marcel Jean, with the Festival’s Films & Programme Planning team, Laurent Million, Yves Nougarède and Sébastien Sperer as well as: Cécile Giraud, Marie-Pauline Mollaret, Clémence Bragard, Gala Frecon, Isabelle Vanini.

Selection results for Graduation films, TV films, Commissioned films to be announced end of March 2023 (feature films: end of April 2023). Annecy International Animation Film Festival takes place from 11-17 June 2023.