After the extraordinary success of last year's open-air screening, this year's edition of the World Festival of Animated Film was once again announced with open-air screenings, as well as with picnics and workshops for children.

The first one was held on 28 May in the very heart of Zagreb, in Zrinjevac park which, thanks to Animafest, became a colourful beehive. ‘Order’ was restored by The Substitute, one of this year’s festival mascots.

Starting from the afternoon hours, the youngest audience had a chance to learn about film at Restart’s workshops, whose team introduced them to the secrets of building a storyline. In the evening, the last year’s winner of Animafest’s Audience Award, Song of the Sea by Tomm Moore, was screened.

If the weather permits, today, on Sunday, we also kindly invite you to join us for a cinema picnic at Zrinjevac. Grab your blankets and picnic hampers, and join Animafest morning thru evening. Workshops for children continue at 5pm and 7pm, and at 9.30pm Zrinjevac’s big screen will be graced by the only Croatian Oscar-winning film, Dušan Vukotić’s The Substitute.

We will also take a look back at the very beginnings of Croatian animation – the Zagreb School – and the film that marked its onset, The Great Meeting by Walter and Norbert Neugebauer (1951), as well as three Oscar-nominated Croatian films – Tup-Tup by Nedeljko Dragić, Dream Doll by Bob Godfrey and Zlatko Grgić, and The Play by Dušan Vukotić. Croatian Oscar winners are also an introduction into a series of attractive programme sections at this year’s Animafest, the one dedicated to the influence of Academy Awards on animation.

In case of rain, screenings will be postponed and everyone is invited to the new open air rendez-vous the next weekend, on Saturday and Sunday, 4 and 5 June, Ribnjak Park.

The screenings there include the winner of last year’s Grand prix for best feature film, Ale Abreu’s Boy and the World, and films already considered classics, which garnered the prestigious statue: Wild Life by Wendy Tilby and Amanda Forbis (2011), Ryan by last year’s Animafest jury member Chris Landreth (2004), an inspiring classic The Man Who Planted Trees by Frédéric Back (1987), Father and Daughter by Michael Dudok de Wit (2000), Every Child by Eugene Fedorenko (1979) and The Danish Poet by Torill Kove (2006).

Let us remind you that festival tickets can be purchased at the recognisable Mandlek-shaped info point in Flower Square, on weekends before the festival and every day during the festival.