The Kranjčar Gallery hosted a press conference for the World Festival of Animated Film – Animafest Zagreb 2024, which takes place from June 3 to 8 in the SC Cinema, Kinoteka Cinema, the Museum of Contemporary Art and other locations. The film programme consists of 350 works, 350 foreign authors are visiting, and in addition to prestigious competitions that also include feature films, there is also a large theme programme dedicated to humour in animation, retrospectives of Phil Mulloy (exhibition, masterclass, films) and Krešimir Zimonić, Czech animation, Animafest PRO with the symposium Animafest Scanner XI and the workshop Rise & Shine, exhibition programme and Children and Youth Programme.

Jury members and distinguished guests, films in international and Croatian competitions and details of the attractive programmes were presented by the artistic director of the festival Daniel Šuljić, producers Matea Milić and Paola Orlić, Head of the Office for Culture and Civil Society of the City of Zagreb Emina Višnić and the winner of Animafest’s Lifetime Achievement Award 2024, the great British animator Phil Mulloy. The festival trailer by Irena Jukić Pranjić and musician Damjan Brkić was presented. Jukić Pranjić is also the author of the festival illustration, which the Studio Kuna zlatica integrated into the overall visual identity of the festival.

Daniel Šuljić greeted the gathered guests on behalf of one of the three most important animated film festivals in the world, a prestigious event that makes Zagreb the ‘City of animation’ and Croatian culture recognizable precisely because of it. More than 1,800 films from 77 countries were submitted for Animafest 2024. Šuljić pointed out the exclusivity of the selection of the Grand Competition – Short Film, which is successfully passed by less than 4% of submitted works (35 out of over 900). With particular satisfaction, Šuljić singled out six Croatian works in the strongest international competitions: Butterfly by Sunčana Brkulj, Žarko, You’ll Spoil the Child! by Veljko and Milivoj Popović, Three Birds by Zarja Menart, Chicks by Petra Pavetić Kranjčec, Windows from the South by Eugen Bilankov and Secret Garden by Filip Gašparović Melis. The Croatian Film Competition brings 22 new works, including new films by Lucija Mrzljak, Hana Tintor and Thomas Johnson and Ivana Bošnjak, as well as three excellent co-productions with Slovenia. The Croatian scene is lively, there are a lot of young people, and in recent years women authors have strongly prevailed. The quality of submission for the Croatian Film Competition was also high, so we should be proud of Academy of Fine Arts’ success – said Šuljić.

Šuljić referred to the world premieres of the films Percebes by Animafest’s winner from 2022 Laura Gonçalves (co-directed with Alexandra Ramires) about the Portuguese coastal region of Algarve and the problems of tourism, The Route by the Iranian Babak Beigi about a driver who transports prisoners to be shot and Contradiction of Emptiness by the Germany-based Russian author Irina Rubina, which was prompted by the war in Ukraine. The darkness in the world around us had a strong impact on artistic contributions this year. As many as 27 world premieres (seven in Grand Competition – Short Film) certainly indicate the prestigious status of the festival – said Šuljić. He also singled out animation celebrities who are competing in Zagreb this year, such as the Golden Palm winner Flóra Anna Buda (27), Ottawa and Toronto winner Darija Khascheeva (Elektra), Animafest laureates Ryo Orikasa, Yumi Joung, Tomek Popakul and Georges Schwizgebel.

The central retrospective section Masters of Animation is dedicated to Phil Mulloy – the winner of the Animafest 2024 Lifetime Achievement Award. Although, as a former student of painting and a graduate of the film and television school, he originally started his career as a director of live action films, he embarked on animation in the late 80s because this medium offered him the possibility of complete freedom and autonomy in building his own worlds. Creating short animated films using a simplified technique of drawing with ordinary black ink and quill on white paper, he realised a stylistically coherent oeuvre recognisable by its rough and raw expression, extreme minimalism, black humour, parody and uncompromising commentary on ‘animalized’ human nature and society. Along with a retrospective of 20 Mulloy’s films, the Kranjčar Gallery is hosting The End of Innocence”, an exclusive exhibition of 30 drawings and previously unseen films, and the great master will also hold a masterclass.

I did not immediately believe that I received the Animafest Lifetime Achievement Award. I haven’t been to festivals for a long time and I thought they had forgotten about me. That’s fantastic. I have always had great respect for Animafest and its selection of films. My wife just won an award, so I’m glad to catch up with her. The inspirations for my entire creativity are the horrors of Auschwitz and Dachau, which I became aware of early on, and the Catholic Church under whose tutelage I was educated. I would say that humanity is present in my work, that I am a humanist even though I show the ugly sides of life and my disgust for them – said Mulloy.

Animafest is an A-list festival for Zagreb, as it is according to its worldwide categorisation. Our country doesn’t have another such festival. Animafest Zagreb is not only significant as an institution that we have supported since 1972 – it is reinvented and innovated year after year in order to be always relevant. From the perspective of the city’s cultural policy, its dedication to authors and promoting artistic creativity is important to us. During Animafest, Zagreb truly becomes a crossroads of world cultures, and signs of our cultural life are sent out into the world. The contribution of the festival to the city and national cultural scene is extremely important. While Animafest lasts, there is a special atmosphere in the city that we are all looking forward to – said Emina Višnić.

The popular Animafest open air will once again contribute to the Zagreb spirit of the festival this year. On May 31st at Ribnjak, in cooperation with Ribnjak Youth Center, at 9:30 p.m., the festival will show the new Oscar-winning film by the great anime master Hayao Miyazaki, The Boy and the Heron.

Our excellent cooperation with various city institutions, such as MSU, cultural centres, various officials with whom we can talk in a friendly, open and immediate manner, is a signal that together we will happily welcome the completion of the planned renovation of spaces where we will be even better – said Matea Milić.

Finally, the festival Friday, 7th June, will be dedicated to the memory of Borivoj Dovniković Bordo, a great of the Zagreb School who made a huge contribution to the creation and development of Animafest. On that day, the organisers and guests of the festival will attend the ceremonial naming of a park in Trešnjevka after Bordo, visit the exhibition in the Oto Reisinger Caricature House and watch a documentary film in the making by Jelena Novaković at KIC.

Šuljić said that the jury of the Grand Competition – Short Film will include Polish animator Marta Pajek, known for strong female stories and perspectives, South African animator known for sand animation Naomi Van Niekerk, German king of grotesque and black humour Malte Stein, Ukrainian animator famous for the film about Mariupol Sofia Melnyk and Croatian film composer Vjeran Šalamon. Stein and Van Niekerk will also hold masterclasses during their stay in Zagreb. Oscar-nominated Portuguese director and winner of the Animafest Audience Award for Ice Merchants João Gonzales will judge in the combined jury of the Student Film Competition and the Croatian Film Competition alongside Diana Cam Van Nguyen, a Vietnamese director working in the Czech Republic, winner of Clermont-Ferrand and nominee of European Film Award, and the director of the Swiss Fantoche festival, Ivana Kvesić. Gonzales and Cam Van Nguyen will also hold masterclasses.

The Student Film Competition consists of 42 works (chosen from 850 submissions), and the French school La Poudrière, recognised primarily for its 2D drawing techniques, earned the title of the best animation school. Two new films of the school will be shown in competition, and we will see many others in the traditional winning retrospective. At the opening of Animafest, the ASIFA Student Award will be awarded for the first time, and it will be received by Nikolina Žabčić for the film Love is a Color. The festival will show twelve nominated films in a special segment.

The jury of the Grand Competition – Feature Film will include Oscar and BAFTA nominated British puppet master Barry Purves (who will also hold a masterclass), president of the Greek animation festival Animasyros Vassilis C. Karamitsanis and Czech-British animator and activist Vera Neubauerova. The central screenings will take place in the evening hours at the Kinoteka Cinema, and include six impressive feature films: Sultana’s Dream (dir. Isabel Herguera), which partly adapts the Indian feminist utopia from 1905, and partly deals with the search of a young animator for feminine principles; the Canadian coming of age When Adam Changes (dir. Joël Vaudreuil) based on a caricature style and a story about a young man who is physically affected by insults (Ottawa festival winner); the animated documentary Pelikan Blue (dir. Lászlo Csáki) about a group of young railway ticket forgers after the fall of communism in Hungary in the 1990s; Benoît Chieux’s lavish children’s fairy-tale fantasy Sirocco and the Kingdom of the Winds (Annecy Audience Award); Chicken for Linda by Sebastien Laudenbach and Chiara Malta, a work focused on the dynamic relationship between mother and daughter (winner of Annecy and CineKid, winner of the César and Lumiere awards and nominated for the European Film Award); Phoenix: Reminiscence of Flower by Shojiro Nishimi, a spectacular science fiction anime, an adaptation of the manga by the legendary Osamu Tezuka, who considered it his life’s work.

Daniel Šuljić also presented an extensive theme programme dedicated to humour in an animated film in six units designed according to types of humour: slapstick, dark humour, theatre of the absurd, verbal humour, satire and ‘that’s just human nature’. In the first unit, one can see the works of Alexeev, Avery, Lasseter, Bronzit, Driessen, Godfrey, etc., in the second, by Hertzfeldt, Stein, Cornwell, et al., in the third, mostly Estonian, Finnish, Japanese and ‘monthypythonian’ films (including Gilliam, Baumane, Lundgren, Yamamura, Wada, etc.), the fourth brings Chuck Jones and Osvaldo Cavandoli, but also Lepore, Kuhn, Keppens, the fifth contains titles by Tezuka, Quinn, Nick Park, Plympton, but also our own Borivoj Dovniković and Nedeljko Dragić, and the sixth Snowden and Fine, Pinkava, Devaux, Sawako Kabuki, etc. In an age when it seems that global politics is turning more and more towards the next world conflict, this year we chose humour for our theme programme– a bit with the intention of confronting it – said Šuljić, who thanked Margit Antauer, Olga Bobrowska and Bill Plympton for their contribution in shaping the programme.

In the retrospective sections of Animafest 2024, a deserved place belongs to one of the last greats of the Zagreb School of Animation and Croatian comics, Krešimir Zimonić, while newer works by established names such as Bill Plympton, Paul Fierlinger, Boris Labbé, Theo Ushev, Ruth Lingford, Max Hattler, Witold Giersz and Koji Yamamura are to be presented in the segment Time for the Masters with the participation of authors themselves. The restored Pozivnica by Branko Ranitović is shown in the same program. Finally, Czech animation (among the oldest in the world) with films by greats such as Švankmajer (on the occasion of his 90th birthday), Barta, Trnka, Brdečka, Pojar and Pavlatova is the focus of the special programme of Animafest 2024. One among seven sections is dedicated to Czech humour, and one to contemporary Czech animation.

The crown of the Animafest 2024 exhibition programme, along with Phil Mulloy’s exhibition “The End of Innocence” at the Kranjčar Gallery, is also the sixth edition of the group exhibition “Behind the Scenes”, which in the SC Gallery gathers the works of authors from the Grand Competition – Short Film and the Student Film Competition. In the lobby of the SC Cinema you can see the exhibition “The Blue Dream Cycle” by Malte Stein, in the Gallery Upstairs in KIC “Žarko, You’ll Spoil the Child!” by Tisja Kljaković Braić, in the Gallery Šira an exhibition by Nikola Majdak and Ana Nedeljković and their students from the Department for Interactive media of the Belgrade Metropolitan University. Finally, the cartoons of Borivoj Dovniković Bordo are exhibited in the Oto Reisinger Caricature House under the title “Oto and Bordo in Dialogue”. Animafest has been trying to give a perspective on animation within the gallery space for years because it is a very elaborate art that deserves it – said Paola Orlić about the exhibition events.

The flagship of Animafest PRO is the International Symposium on Contemporary Animation Animafest Scanner XI (June 4 and 5, KIC). It will be opened with a lecture by Ingo Petzke, an internationally acclaimed German expert in the field of film and video art and winner of the Award for Outstanding Contribution to Animation Studies in 2024. The symposium will discuss the early history of animation, editing and humour in animated film, and issues of authorship related to the use of artificial intelligence. The symposium is open to the interested public. The third edition of Rise & Shine, organised in cooperation with Ljubljana’s Animateka and CEE Animation, will present 11 projects from as many countries, including Croatia. Mentors will once again be Oscar winner Michaël Dudok de Wit, multiple Goya Award winner Pedro Rivero and Anna Vášová, screenwriter and producer with vast international experience. The AFN Edu event, on the other hand, is intended for animation students, which enables mobility and international cooperation. It is organised by the Animation Festival Network, a network of the five most important animation festivals in Central and Eastern Europe, coordinated by Animafest. AFN will publicly present the results of the research as well as conclusions and strategies for encouraging the representation of women in animation. The presentation will be led by Jakub Spevák, programme director of the Slovakian festival Fest Anča. AFN also shows the film program “That’s What She Said”, which brings together outstanding works by contemporary European women authors. The professional programme will also deal with the phenomenon of student films that, in addition to school institutions, were produced by professional studios and achieved exceptional festival success. Michaela Mihályi and David Štumpf (authors of the film Sh_t Happens screened at Venice, Sundance and elsewhere) will give a presentation on this combination of student talent and professional production support. Animafest 2024 will also present the 3rd edition of Emile Awards.

We do not have an animation industry in the true sense of the word, but we have connections, people and understanding for young authors who need an extra boost in the development of animation projects. That is why we have more than 100 students from 10 countries and 12 academies on the AFN Edu programme. Practice has confirmed that with good encouragement, a student becomes a very successful professional, like the Oscar-nominated João Gonzales. We want to dedicate ourselves to students and invest in them in every way, because they are future professionals and our loyal guests – said Matea Milić about the professional programme of Animafest 2024.

Milić also pointed out that Animafest 2024 wants to enable audiences of different ages to see films from different generations of authors for free. Student Film Competition, Films for Children and Youth Competition, all segments of the Masters of Animation (Time for the Masters and films by Mulloy and Zimonić), special film events (La Poudrière retrospective, AFN “That’s What She Said” and ASIFA Student Award selection) and the entire Animafest in Your Neighbourhood programme in the city’s cultural centres can be seen without paying a ticket.

She also spoke about the traditionally rich and diverse Children and Youth Programme. The 34 films of the Films for Children Competition and Films for Youth Competition were selected by Nino Kovačić’s pre-selection by Slovenian media psychologist Martina Peštaj, editor of the Children and Youth Programme of Radio Television of Slovenia, who classified them according to their suitability into four age categories (3-6, 7-10, 11-14 and 15+). The themes of coexistence with nature (harmony and disharmony, beauty, strength and importance of the ecosystem), as well as those of mental health, music, dance and play, and coping with life’s challenges, are especially highlighted. In addition to the competition, there is also a Family Programme, ideal for watching with parents. In addition to the two films of the Grand Competition – Feature Film suitable for children (Chicken for Linda and Sirocco and the Kingdom of Winds) you can also see the wonderful family film Tony, Shelly and the Magic Light (dir. Filip Pošivač). The family programme (the feature-length puppet film Even Mice Belong in Heaven by Jan Bubeníček and Denise Grimm) and the Films for Children Competition 3-6 and 7-10 are shown as part of the Animafest in Your Neighbourhood event in the city’s cultural centres Maksimir, Dubrava, Travno, Sesvete and KNAP.

Some of Animafest’s programme can be seen outside of Zagreb. In cooperation with the Mediterranean Film Festival in Split, AFN’s program “That’s What She Said” will be shown, and part of the Animafest 2024 programme will also visit the Art-kino Croatia and the Tobogan Children’s Festival in Rijeka.