ANIMAC International Animation Film Festival of Catalonia 2024
Festival Description: ANIMAC International Animation Film Festival of Catalonia is a not-for-profit cultural event organized by Lleida City Council and supported by the Department of Culture of the Government of Catalonia and other public and private bodies. Animac is a non-competitive film festival aimed at artists who use animation as a tool for personal expression.
2024 Call for Entries
The 28th edition of Animac will be held in Lleida from 15 to 18 February 2024. There are no limits on length or restrictions on the year of production of the film.
Audience Award
The Shorts 1, 2, 3, 4 and White Cube sessions are eligible for the Audience Award for Animac best short, the Future Talent sessions are eligible for the Audience Award for Future Talent best short and the Little Animac sessions are eligible for the Audience Award for Little Animac best short.
- Festival Regulations
- Entry Form
- Deadline: 16 October 2023
2023 Festival Coverage
Animac, International Animation Film Festival of Catalonia, announces the list of productions selected to form part of its official sections ‒ Shorts, Future Talent, Little Animac, and Talent.cat ‒ which will be screened in this 27th festival to be held onsite in Lleida from 23 to 26 February and online through the Filmin platform from 3 to 12 March. The short The Flying Sailor (Shorts 1), by the Canadians Wendy Tilby and Amanda Forbis, based on a real event involving an explosion caused by the collision of two ships in a port, is nominated for an Oscar in the category for Best Animated Short Film.
Animac’s official sections are especially dedicated to shorts, as it allows for a more personal vision and style to be expressed and maximum experimentation in the search for new languages, aesthetics and techniques.
This year, the official section Shorts, a selection of the best and most recent animated short films from around the world, presents 40 productions from 22 different countries over five sessions. Apart from the aforementioned film, notable in this section is the stop motion short Salvation Has No Name (Shorts 2), directed by Joseph Wallace; Amarradas (Shorts 2), a film by the Spaniard Carmen Córdoba that explores the link between a mother and daughter and is nominated for a Goya award; Sierra (Shorts 4), by the Estonian Sander Joon, which enters a surreal world of car racing; and O Homem do Lixo (The Garbage Man - Shorts 4), by the Portuguese Laura Gonçalves, which tells the story of a man who endured a hard life with humour and fantasy.
Amok (Shorts 3), by Balázs Turai, winner of the Cristal Award at the Annecy festival, will also be screened, as well as Babičino seksualno življenje (Granny's Sexual Life - Shorts 3), by Urška Djukić and Émilie Pigeard, nominated for the César Award of the French Academy. The first of these is short with no dialogue in which the protagonist faces his inner demons after losing his fiancée and his good looks in a freak accident, while the second goes on a journey to the youth of a grandmother to show Slovenian women in the first half of the 20th century.
The section for narrative and visual experiments in the official section Shorts, the session Shorts 5 White Cube, will feature the films The Hour Coat, by Amy Kravitz; Backflip, by Nikita Diakur; Boca, by Frederic Amat; and Intermission, by Réka Bucsi, among others.
The section Future Talent, dedicated to shorts received from animation schools around the world, this year has three sessions with a total of 37 shorts selected from 14 countries, notably À bicyclette, by Océane Lavergne, Benjamin Langagne, Lucas Durot, Pierre Cilluffo, Marine Beuvain and Kerrian Detay; Slouch, by Michael Bohnenstingl; and An Ostrich Told Me the World Is Fake and I Think I Believe It, by Lachlan Pendragon. This section is an excellent showcase for new creators, who have just graduated and have the opportunity to see their short films shown on the big screen.
Little Animac, the section of the festival aimed squarely at the very young and their families, has programmed 48 films from 18 countries in six different sessions. The aim of Little Animac is to introduce children to the world of animation and its various techniques while encouraging their curiosity and taste for cinema.
The films screened will include the series of micro-shorts Našeprasátko (Little Animac 1 Short & Sweet), by Jaromír Plachý, creator of the adventure videogame Botanicula; Bill i Janet (The Smeds and the Smoos - Little Animac 2), by Daniel Snaddon and Samantha Cutler, the tenth adaptation of the book by the writer Julia Donaldson; and Operación Frankenstein (Little Animac 3), by José María Fernández de Vega, a film with a surprising ending, far from the classic tale.
The films included in the official sections Shorts, Future Talent and Little Animac are eligible for the Festival award, decided by the audience.
Moreover, the section Talent.cat, which brings together animation films from students in Catalan-speaking territories, this year has the participation of 14 schools which have submitted 16 films: Let's Dance, Beyond the Fringe, La Cucharada, Half-Dog, Pank con chocolate, Sweet Side, Jidai (次代), Era del presente, Ventanas, Pieces of Us, Chimborazo, Sully, Sunburned, Vestigis, Proceso Mental and Papirola.
It should be noted that, although Animac is the oldest festival, it is also the youngest because it welcomes all these creations by students from different schools in Catalonia, says the director of Animac, Carolina López. In this section, the best short will be chosen by a jury of professionals.
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2021 Festival Coverage
2020 Festival Coverage
The South African artist William Kentridge will receive the Animac 2020 Honorary Award for being a global artist, an original and committed filmmaker, and an essential benchmark in animated memory and art in animation. Florence Miailhe, the great lady of French animation, will be presented with the Animation Master Award in the opening of Animac, to be held in Lleida on 27 February.
The Bulgarian Theodore Ushev returns to Animac after having become one of the great names of world animation. His most recent films will be screened in the opening of Animac and he will deliver a lecture. Another of Animac 2020’s guests is the Estonian animation filmmaker, producer and academic Ülo Pikkov, one of the most original international directors in illustrating time and memory in stop motion. He will deliver a lecture and Animac will devote a retrospective to him. The French cartoonist and director Aurel will deliver a lecture on the work process of his long-awaited animated feature film called Josep.
The Mexicans Karla Castañeda and Luis Téllez are visiting Animac. They form part of a generation of young independent Mexican animators prominent in the international scene thanks to their stop motion works and mentored by the Oscar-winning film director Guillermo del Toro.
Nuria G. Blanco, producer at Cartoon Saloon, will be the patroness of Animac Campus, the space for animation students visiting the festival.
The director Regina Pessoa and the producer Abi Feijó, great exponents of animation made in Portugal, will present in Animac the short Tio Tomás: A contabilidade dos dias, a recent winner at the Annie Awards. Pessoa and Feijó will lead the Animac workshop for illustration students of the Leandre Cristòfol Municipal Art School in Lleida.
A Networking and Pitch with national and international projects of an extraordinary quality. 39 projects in gestation have been received to participate in Incubator, 22 Porfolio to be reviewed by experienced mentors, and 10 companies will participate in the Market Pitch to offer and showcase their services.
2019 Festival Coverage:
2018 Festival Coverage
- Read our Festival Preview: 'Animation and Music' tribute, Feature Films, Bezalel Academy of Arts at 2018 Animac Lleida Festival
Event Dates
- From 15 February 2024 to 18 February 2024
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