Only a few days left before the beginning of the 26th edition of the World Festival of Animated Film – Animafest Zagreb, which is giving its audience two more free open air screenings – a big screen, a green and a dance party!

After a magnificent fairy-tale introduction into the festival with open air screenings last weekend at Zrinjevac, Animafest invites you to wrap up this week as well with a cinematic picnic!

On Saturday, 4 June and Sunday, 5 June at Ribnjak Park we will be screenings the last year’s Animafest Grand Prix winner, Boy and the World, along with six short word classics which have garnered the Academy Award over the years.

Ale Abreu’s Boy and the World is scheduled for Saturday, 9.30pm, a wonderful tale suitable for children over nine years of age. The boy from the title leaves his village for the neon and a technological metropolis. What does he find there? Find out at Ribnjak!

As introduction into the Sunday screening, Ribnjak is hosting a retro dance party, organised by Animafest at 7pm in association with Back to Swing association.

At 9.30pm we’ll dance away into a selection of six short Oscar-winning classics, to the choice of our distinguished festival guests – a Canadian art couple, producer Marcy Page and composer Normand Roger. Their own film projects have earned a total of 19 Oscar nominations and eight wins. We’ll have a chat about them with Marcy Page on 11 June at 12am, Zagreb Dance Centre.

The selection curated by Marcy and Norman for Animafest’s audience includes both older and more recent Oscar winners: Wild Life by Wendy Tilby and Amanda Forbis (2011), about a young expat sent in 1909 from England to Alberta to try his hand in agriculture. However, his love of badminton, bird-watching and alcohol does not leave him enough time for the cattle.

Another classic in this selection is The Man Who Planted Trees by Frédéric Back (1987), an ode to patience and labour, based on the namesake allegorical short story by Jean Gion.

Ryan, by last year’s Animafest jury member Chris Landreth, was inspired by the life of the influential Canadian animator and the author’s friend Ryan Larkin, computer-generated and ‘interviewed’ by Landreth.

An overwhelming film of powerful emotions is Father and Daughter by Michael Dudok de Wit (2000), a heart-warming tale of separation and reconnection between a father and a daughter, or Every Child by Eugene Fedorenko (1979), cute door-to-door travel adventures of an unwanted baby.

At Ribnjak Animafest will also show the film The Danish Poet by Torill Kove (2006), a film about inspiration and an unusual chain of events.

The day after Ribnjak, on Monday 6 June, the 26th Animafest Zagreb begins. To cinemas Europa and Tuškanac and the Zagreb Dance Centre it brings over 300 outstanding short and feature animated films to make Zagreb once again the centre of world animation.