Festival description:

LINOLEUM Festival aims to support animation artists and promote animation worldwide. The objective of the Festival is to encourage and celebrate creativity amongst animators and media artists, promote contemporary animation and media art in Ukraine.

Linoleum Contemporary International Animation and Media Art Festival Coverage

2026

Festival Theme

BLIND SPOT is the theme of the 13th edition. Blind Spot — is a space or an area that a person cannot see or perceive, even when trying to. In physiology, it is the point on the retina that lacks photoreceptors, where the image simply disappears from the field of vision. In a metaphorical sense, it is the zone of our unconsciousness — the place where we fail to notice our own biases, doubts, or distortions of reality. It is there, in the shadow, that comfortable illusions are born — where each of us chooses not to see what’s difficult to face.

The past few years have shown how easy it is to lose the ability to distinguish truth from manipulation, how fragile our critical thinking can be. We’ve grown accustomed to simple answers, loud slogans, and collective “concerns” that too often hide an absence of real action. This year’s theme is an attempt to see what we usually avoid — to recognize our own zones of insensitivity in how we perceive the world, politics, and art. To learn to call things by their names and stop hiding behind silence or linguistic clichés. Only then can we regain clarity — in our personal field of vision and in our collective view of the world.

The visual concept will be created by an award-winning Ukrainian animation director, Stas Santimov (Spooky Loops, The Surrogate, Eluvium - Regenerative Being).

Linoleum Contemporary International Animation and Media Art Festival Call for Entries

Call for Entries

Films made in any animation technique, including works combining animation with acting and documentaries, are eligible. The animated part should be at least 50% of the film and not exceed the running time of 20 minutes. The films must be produced after January 1, 2025.  For British-produced films, please note that LINOLEUM is a BAFTA Qualifying Festival.

Short films can be submitted to the following competition categories:

- International Competition
- Ukrainian Competition (only for Ukrainian animation films)
- Commissioned Films

Out-of-competition categories:

- Experimental Animation and Video Art
- Animation created for and by kids and teens (up to 16 y.o.)
- Ladies first (for female directors)

• Submissions via FilmFreeway 
• Deadline: 1 May 2026 for International Films, 31 May 2026 for Ukrainian films
  

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