The most extensive and intense festival in Italy reached its 16th edition. Yes, we are talking about the Piccolo Festival dell' Animazione. This year the festival will begin between the 11th and 18th of November. Seven days to celebrate the finest animation art. From Thursday 16th to Saturday 18th the Festival will be based in San Vito al Tagliamento where guests and the jury will be welcomed. In this edition, the theme is about the community based on our differences. In the statement words of her director Paola Bistrot.

In the 16th edition of the festival, we aim to highlight a chorus of voices and personalities from different nations, some of which are unintentionally involved in conflicts. Culture is not an isolated bubble, and we do not want it to be or become one. We need to make room for all voices that share a common poetic and artistic language - Paola Bistrot

This year’s festival has a selection of 84 films from different European and international countries. Screenings, exhibitions, comic book reading, concerts, masterclasses, and much more will give an explosion of artistic life to the cities of the FVG region, such as Trieste, Pordenone, Udine, Dobbia, Staranzano, Gorizia and San Vito al Tagliamento. The trailer for the 16th edition of the festival was created by Isabella Bignardi, a young student at ISIA in Urbino with music created by Andrea Mangia, aka Populous (published by La Tempesta).

San Vito al Tagliamento - Church of San Lorenzo

The first event of the Piccolo Animation Festival will take place on Saturday, November 11th at 5:00 PM. The exhibition Animated Designs and Other Stories (Disegni Animati e Altre Storie) will be inaugurated. The exhibition will feature the drawings by Sara Colaone from the comic book 'Il Barone Rampante', as part of #Calvino100, the celebrations for the centenary of the Italian writer’s birth. In collaboration with Stripburger, the 24th edition of Viva i Fumetti/Živel Strip, will feature the works of twinned authors Paolo Cossi and Anka Kočevar and the award ceremony of the students' competition. The church of San Lorenzo will be, as in the latest years, the heart of the festival where all attendees and creators will have the opportunity to exchange their experiences.

Davide Toffolo and Paola Bistrot @ Elena Tubaro

Venues all over Friuli Venezia Giulia region

Other official venues of the Piccolo Festival dell'Animazione are the Visionario cinema in Udine, the Kinemax in Gorizia, DobiaLab of Staranzano and Cinemazero in Pordenone. In which will be screened over 80 animated films from all over the world, carefully selected, and divided into five sections. The Main Competition, The Green Animation, section focused on sustainability and ecology. One of the favorites of the audience is the Visual & Music competition. The complementary competitions are AnimaKids and AnimaYoung with the short films selected by Giovanni Sgrò and Valentina Corocher. The films will be judged by the students of the schools of Friuli Venezia Giulia which sees over a thousand students from the various schools of the region involved in attendance. This year the festival will have great participation with five hundred students from the Comprehensive Institute 'Margherita Hack'' of San Vito al Tagliamento, the 'Max Fabiani' Artistic High School, and the University of Nova Gorica at the Kinemax in Gorizia. Other schools involved in the activities for the students are the State Artistic High School 'Giovanni Sello' l and the Art High School 'Galvani' of Cordenons. Stefano Tambellini will be in charge of the masterclass during the week of the festival where the Animayoung sections will be screened for the high school students.

Jury 2023

The jury for this year is composed of Sara Colaone, comics author, Slave Lukarov, director of the Supertoon Festival, and Rastko Ćiri, author and former professor at the University of Visual Arts in Belgrade. All of them will have the difficult task of judging and selecting the winners of the main competition. The jury for the Visual & Music and Green Animation competition is composed of Radostina Neykova, a teacher at the National Academy of Theater and Film Arts 'Kr. Sarafov'. Pierre Bourrigault, author and graphic designer. And Manuel Baldassare, visual artist and musician.

Films to keep an eye on

Among the films to follow on the program we find the award-winning film by Flóra Anna Buda '27'. The last film by Margherita Giusti, 'Meatseller', was presented at the Venice Film Festival. On the thorny topic of migration, the film 'Our Uniform' by Iranian author Yegane Moghaddam. The award-winning film 'Eeva' by the very well-known artists Lucija Mrzljak and Morten Tšinakov, an Estonian-Croatian co-production that won Best Animated Short Film award at the Nashville Film Festival (Οscar-qualified festival) and from the creator of 'I am Going for Cigarettes', Osman Cerfon brings us his new film 'AAAAH', a film worth watching. For the lovers of Puppet animation, the dark and fun film 'The Family Portrait' by Lea Vidakovia. Not to be missed the world premiere of the film by brothers Alice and Stefano Tambellini, 'Impossible Maladies'. To keep the view fresh it is worth watching the films from both the ISIA of Urbino and the CSC of Turin, a selection made in collaboration with Magda Guidi and Chiara Magri.

'Impossible Maladies' by Stefano Tambellini, Alice Tambellini

'Yellow Light' by Tal Kantor

The opening of the festival, concerts, and much more

The PFA will officially open on November 11th at 6.30 pm. Just afterward a talk between Davide Toffolo and Andrea Lorenzon, creator of the very famous 'Cartoni Morti', will offer an overview of the popular activity of Andrea as an online cartoonist. In the late evening, the films from the Visual & Music section will be screened, and the conclusion is entrusted to the group Elkann Henudo Chaotic Set; they will present 'Sonar Magma', which mixes experimental sounds and videos. This performance will worthily close the intense first day of the Festival.

A special event on Friday 17th at 5.30 pm will be the presentation of 'Fumettibrutti', the stage name of Josephine Yole Signorelli, who will present her reading 'Anesthesia'. An exceptional event by a leading author on the authorial scene who tells a story linked to the affirmation of gender identity. A very interesting performance of Enrico Sist, called Moody Toon-Tunes, will take place on the 17th at 10 pm in which the Pordenone DJ Selector will propose a sound manipulation with a selection set dedicated to the origins of animation.

Among the unmissable events during the festival worth mentioning is the performance of 'Cumbia Minimal' on November 18th at 10 pm with the participation of the Arrigoni String Orchestra, led by Domenico Mason and the San Vito Philharmonic Association. The performance with the artistic direction of Davide Toffolo includes a call to literate musicians who can participate by bringing an instrument and a music stand and arriving at the Concordia Auditorium at 5 pm for rehearsals until the musical action at 8 pm. 'Cumbia Minimal' is a minimalist composition inspired by Terry Riley's 'In C' and the Colombian and Andean musical traditions. This performance will be phenomenally complemented with screenings by the master animator Michele Bernardi.

As a sweet epilogue on November 30th at the Teatro dei Fabbri in Trieste will be screened the Best Off of the Festival, with the award-winning films selected by the jury on November 18th. As in every edition, the Piccolo Festival dell'Animazione will be the space where all the animation lovers, together with the guests, authors, producers, and jury will discuss, enjoy, and get excited about living the great experience prepared for this 2023 edition.

In Zippy Frames we will announce the winners and summary of the entire festival. Stay tuned!

Watch the Piccolo Festival dell'Animazione 2023 trailer:

• Τhe full festival schedule

Contributed by: Kropka