El Festival Pixelatl 2025

Event Description: The main gathering of Latin American creators and the global animation, comic and videogame industries. Pixelatl summons each year creators from around the globe: professionals, executives, artists, students, and fans.

2025 Call for Entries

Short films can be submitted made and/or published after January 1, 2024.
- Works on any subject and any painting technique are accepted in narrative and non-narrative animation.
- In the case of a work that mixes live action with animation, must have frame animation above 60% of the total duration of the short film.
- The duration must be less than 29 minutes including credits.
- If the language of the short film is different from English, they must have subtitles in that language so that they can be viewed by the international jury.
- Only works completed in one of the following may apply.

Categories
• Mexican animated student short film
• International  animated short film
• International experimental animated short film

• Regulations
• Entry via FilmFreeway
• Deadline: 20 June 2025 at 23:59, Mexico time (GTM -6).

2020 Festival Coverage (ARCHIVE)

Programme Highlights

With an ambitious program of conferences and business meetings, the Mexican association Pixelatl presented the program of its festival, promising that “it will not be another cycle of online conferences like so many that have emerged lately”, but an international bonding and learning experience for all artists and entrepreneurs in the creative industries of Mexico and Latin America.

The event, which will take place from September 1 to 5 online as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, will be attended by vice presidents and top executives from the main international networks such as Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon, Netflix, Fox, Discovery Kids, Sony Pictures Animation, Disney Animation Studios, Dreamworks Animation TV, Amazon Studios, the UK’s BBC, PBS, and Televisa, among others, which will be available to participating studios to have business meetings where they will show ideas for new intellectual properties or their capabilities for service work.

In the midst of the economic crisis, a consequence of the COVID pandemic, the creative industry can be an engine of economic recovery for Mexico and Latin America.  Each Festival is part of a process that takes place over the course of the year, the best ten or twelve series or animated film projects that are presented to the networks are selected from the Ideatoon call. Some of the previous year’s projects are already being produced - José Iñesta, Pixelatl’s director.

For the delegates of the studios that attend, a pre-agenda of business meetings is prepared based on information that they fill out after registering their participation. Also, there is a help desk during the networking event to help networks find more appointments with studios from Latin America.

Recruitment
National and international studios participate in the event to recruit new talent. In previous years, for example, Quebec companies have hired Mexican creators both to work remotely from Mexico or to take them to their studios in Canada. Moreover, bigger studios take advantage of the event to meet new talent and emerging artists so that they can hire them. This year major studios will be recruiting and doing portfolio reviews like Laika, Bento Box, Disney, and Nickelodeon,” explained Christian Bermejo, Pixelatl’s Artistic Director.

Women in Animation
During the press conference, Bermejo was in charge of presenting details of the event's program, where he pointed out that it was designed to highlight and promote female talent in the industry. For this reason, among the main guests at the festival are Rebecca Sugar, creator of Steven Universe, or the stellar presentation of Onyx Equinox, an original Crunchyroll series created by Mexican Sofía Alexander.

Other prominent guests include Taneka Stots, who has also been a comic book editor; Julia Pott, creator of the acclaimed HBO Max animated series “Summer Camp Island”; art director Linda Chen, who is currently working at Dreamworks TV on Guillermo del Toro's Tales of Arcadia series; the German-based Dutch illustrator “Loish”, whose illustrations go viral on social media globally; or Matisse Gonzalez Jordán, Bolivian animator who will present a pilot developed for Cartoon Network.

Other highlights
With over one hundred activities that make up the 2020 Pixelatl Festival program, the following also stand out:
• The exclusive premiere of a new Cartoon Network show
• Four talks and panels by Nick animation, from an artistic and business perspective
• A panel with the Supervising Directors of the adult animated series that are icons: Bojack
Horseman, The Simpson, American Dad, Midnight Gospel, Paradise PD.
• Panel with ILM executives and artists about the Star Wars universe
• Disney Animation panel with legendary animators
• Presentation with the creators of “Duncanville”, the new FOX flagship series that is about to be released.

2019 Festival Coverage