Fest Anča’s Slovak Competition 2024: Exploration of boundaries
The Slovak Competition of Shorts at this year’s Fest Anča included eight films that used diverse animation styles to showcase the genre’s potential to explore themes such as family, transformation, and our deep-seated fears. In line with the festival’s nightmare theme, the selection presented some notable productions that delved into darker states of mind, often exorcising them and allowing them to dissipate through the craft of animation. Four films stood out among the abstract experiments, children’s films, and student shorts.
A student film by Alla Dmitrievna, 'Of Stars and Fables', takes the viewer through outer space on a journey of self-discovery. Starting as an innocuous story about a lost dog, the vivid combination of hand-painted landscapes and 2D animation infuses the narrative with captivating energy. As the teenage protagonist somehow finds himself transported to what seems to be another planet, animated through claymation, he begins expressing himself through dance. Following the rhythms of thumping electronic music, curious anthropomorphic animals and wobbly characters animate the bizarre world around the hero. An eerie turn of events prompts him to leave the planet, the strobe light lending its radiance to endless portals to the unknown. Produced at the Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava, this short allows for a gentle transformation, a comfort that is robbed from the protagonist of the second standout film of this year’s Slovak selection.
Produced at the same school, Imrich Kútik’s short entitled 'Silo' focuses on hard-fought escape rather than a natural rite of passage. Centering on a group of women who work a wheat field to fill a huge silo, the film bleakly offers an affecting image of physical and psychological entrapment. Watched over by a murder of menacing crows, the women feel that escape is futile. This feeling is only heightened by the bareness of the landscape which eats away at hope. Combining 2D and 3D animation, Kútik creates slow-burning sequences that focus on Claire, a woman with distinctive grey hair highlights, who is determined to escape. Like 'Of Stars and Fables' in its lack of dialogue, the film’s score mirrors the protagonist’s emotional state, with piercing strings playing tunes of boredom, determination, and terror.
Silo
Interrupting the music with their dissonant screeching, the crows become frightening black clouds, a sight that plunges the animation into nightmarish territory. Set in a similarly bleak universe, 'Dream Rotation' sets the scene slowly, engaging in an immersive game of expectations. Co-created by Darya Sidorova, Viktória Zimmermannová, Rebeka Vakrčková, and Katarína Jelínková, this student film feels like opening a hidden repository of nightmares. Around a red fire that contrasts the predominantly black-and-white animation, four hand-drawn characters gather to tell their stories. The minimalist style allows the filmmakers to focus on the sinister implications of their characters. Out of the four, a sad girl is depicted in a distinctly intricate style, the most prominent detail being the bloody knife in her hand. Her tale is darkly comic, while the rest of the campfire stories that follow are immersed in horror. The short acts as a visual representation of an anxious subconscious that marinates in thoughts of such things as demonic possessions and irrational fears about bathrooms. This effective incursion into the dark corners of the mind is sure to leave a lasting impression, allowing viewers to pick their horrifying poison. But it also leaves space for a brief realization that these visions are a figment of an imagination immersed in the night’s misleading darkness.
Cleverly placed at the end of the selection, 'Hello Summer', co-directed by Martin Smatana and Veronika Zacharová, acts as the competition’s sunny respite. A buoyant vision of a family vacation in which everything goes wrong, the short overflows the screen with joy and color. Through a combination of 2D computer animation, hand-drawn visuals, and crafty insertion of everyday objects, this vision of the seaside, which implies a state of mind rather than a location, feels quite tangible. As we follow the family members around, we briefly absorb their interests, expressed through a collage that gains its charm from neatly placed textured real-life objects such as glasses, blankets, and hats. The pacing of 'Hello Summer' surprises the audience, just as the family is overwhelmed by the loss of luggage, the poor accommodation, and the lack of money. It is a wild vacation that runs at the same speed as the twirly coffee cups that have replaced the plane’s engine. A gem about the importance of quality time with the family, this brief incursion at the seaside, which deservedly received the competition’s Special Mention, is sure to brighten your day.
Hello, Summer
Experimentation also made its presence felt in the competition, with 'Perplexity' by Franz Milec and 'Tapping Black Boot' by Kaoru Furuko. The former focuses on visual impact more than anything, which makes it challenging to unlock its confusing images without the help of programme notes. More narratively nuanced, Tapping Black Boots creates a dynamic atmosphere around Slovak folk imagery, inviting the viewer to discover local traditions through vivid flashes of colour and mesmerizing musical patterns. The competition also included Veronika Obertová’s Bobo, a children’s film with a clean, if not entirely functional visual style that conveys an educational message about eyesight problems.
Perplexity
Finally, the Anča Award for Best Slovak Animated Short went to Niko Mlynarčík's 'Wereawolf', a commendable effort that explores cyberbullying but ultimately misses the mark due to an abrasive style that dampens the message’s impact. Confined to the hidden universe of online chats, the story delves into taboos and internet culture with ambitious nonchalance. Still, its exploration of harmful digital relationships seems to quickly lose track of the film’s scope. While the jittery hand-drawn animation relevantly captures the feelings of an anxious teenager, the short’s biting temper consumes most of its brief runtime, overshadowing its contemporary themes.
Wereawolf
This competition highlighted the potential of a new generation of Slovak animators, showcasing the diverse sensibilities emerging from the country's film schools and independent artists. Thematically, these shorts seem to converge on an exploration of obstacles and boundaries, whether physical or psychological. Their focus is not on immediately overcoming them, but rather on contemplating the thresholds and eventually finding release and empathy beyond them. Except for the two mentioned experimental films, their vision of animation is tightly related to the narrative, with bold imagery deployed to emphasize the characters and their stories. The diversity
of techniques is discernible, as Slovak animation develops as an eclectic craft that sees digital, hand-drawn, and stop-motion methods as equally important in creating captivating storytelling.
(cover image: Dream Rotation by Darya Sidorova, Viktória Zimmermannová, Rebeka Vakrčková, and Katarína Jelínková)
contributed by: Sergiu Inizian