Over the ten days of the festival (21/2 - 1/3/2020), Anima has prepared eight daily screening sessions for adults.

Anima 2020 will invite them to discover six features in competition like the astonishing Away, from the Latvian filmmaker Gints Zilbalodis, that describes the contemplative journey of a young biker through some amazing landscapes; or the crazy Old Man Cartoon Movie from Estonians Oskar Lehemaa and Mikk Mägi, about the explosive holidays of a grandfather and his two newly arrived grandchildren.

Four Japanese features by famous independent filmmakers are also in the competition: Children of the Sea, a marine fantasy tale by Ayumu Watanabe, director of Doreamon and After the Rain; The Relative Worlds, by Yuhei Sakuragi evoking the existence of a parallel world; Ride your Wave, a love story about the special bond created between surfers, from the director of the cult film Mind Game, Masaaki Yuasa, and The Wonderland, a mysterious adventure by Keiichi Hara (Summer days with Coo, Colorful, Miss Hokusai).

And finally, the Festival will be coming to a close with the screening of the Danish feature by Anders Morgenthaler and Mikael Wulff, Monty and the Street Party, full of fun and a little provocation that our friends the Danes are so good at!

Anima is quite often the last opportunity to (re)see certain releases that have recently been in the news, such as the poignant The Swallows of Kabul by Zabou Breitmann and Eléa Gobbé-Mévellec, and the splendid I Lost my Body by Jérémy Clapin, along with the hard-hitting animated documentary Zero Impunity by Nicolas Blies, Stéphane Hueber-Blies and Denis Lambert, dealing with the very hot topical subject of rape used as a weapon of war, which will be presented as part of the tribute to the Luxembourg studio Mélusine, in the presence of the film crew.

• Read our review for Zero Impunity

Short films will also be in great profusion as a total of 135 Belgian and international shorts were handpicked for 3 It's Belgian programmes in the national competition and the 7 Best of Shorts programmes for the international competition. The pulse of contemporary animation is beating with new talents and great masters in these programmes, like Theodore Ushev and his melancholic The Psychics of Sorrow, Regina Pessoa, rewarded with an Annie Award for Uncle Thomas: Accounting for the Days or Bruno Collet, winner of the Annecy Cristal for Mémorable.

And then there are the event programmes such as the screening of the entire captivating series Undone, produced by Amazon Prime and directed by the great portraitist Hisko Hulsing, or the hilarious Women in Laugh or humour with a feminine touch, and others like the Animated Night.

Anima Festival takes places in Flagey Brussels from 21 February to 1 March 2020.