Day four at the 29th World Festival of Animated Film features a somewhat more casual schedule for Animafest’s 250 guests, meeting in the early hours for the traditional picnic. A casual get-together at the Mirnovec Ethno Farmnear Samobor is a great chance for small talk about animation and other everyday festival topics, as well as a much needed countryside break from screenings, exhibitions, events and night parties. But to the festival audience the schedule is just as intense.

Kinoteka’s auditorium will be, as usual, teeming with keen young animation lovers at 9:30 at the screening of Children’s Film Competition 3 and 2 (11:30) and the Family Programme Animal Kingdom of Film Bilder (celebrating the 30th birthday of this German studio) (15:30). However, at 17:30 the young ones will be joined by adults for the second and last chance to see the magnificent poetic feature Away by the young Latvian genius Gints Zilbalodis about the archetypal journey of a boy, premiering at Animafest on Tuesday. At 20 h the GC – Short Film 4 follows, with Grand Canons by Alain Biet, a multimedia artist born in 1959 who is only now making his animation debut. He started this project back in 2004, obsessively documenting daily objects imitating practices of 19th century biologists. With over 6000 drawings, Biet focuses on the perspective, time and dichotomies between the animate and the inanimate and nature and culture. Thanks to attractive rhythmical music, the perception of his impressive project can be a casual audiovisual leisure with a retro-animation touch. Another entry in this section is the latest film by the star of global animation Regina Pessoa, an intimate (auto)biographic piece Uncle Thomas, Accounting for the Days about a touching relationship between a girl and a man obsessed with numbers, and this celebrity block also includes Animafest’s 2016 winner Phil Mulloy with In the Future, continuing his recognisable minimalist satirical poetics. Attention should be paid to the experimental Down Escalation by the young Japanese multimedia artist Shunsaku Hayashi, a work of exceptional visual quality. At 22 h don’t miss the last chance to see Another Day of Life, a masterful title about the civil war in Angola and the legendary Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuściński.

At 17:30, Kaptol Boutique Cinema screens, also for the last time, another Cold War story from the GC – Feature Film, the multi award-winning Funan by Denis Do, with magnificent landscapes of Cambodia – a family film about survival during the Khmer Rouge period. The director is a guest at the festival, so don’t miss this screening, followed by a Q&A. Up next is the theme programme Animation and Fine Arts under the title Freshly Painted!, with the recent works directly inspired by fine arts. These include the works by Jie Shen, Tara Knight, Svetlana Filippova, Elisabeth Hobbs, Fumi Ohi, Reinhold Bidner and the Croatian author Vladislav Knežević. His Document Paracosmic will be screened in 3D, which is the first such screening at Animafest in the last few years. The programme at Kaptol ends with the World Panorama 3, followed by a Q&A with the filmmakers.

At 10 h Tuškanac screens the Student Film Competition 1, followed at noon by the extremely fierce Grand Competition – Short Film 1, and at 14 h by a treat for the lovers of classics – a retrospective of Croatian animated films made in 1971, curated by Borivoj Dovniković – Bordo. Join us for a screening of films by Marks and Jutriša, Majdak, Grgić, Blažeković, Zaninović, Kolar, Mimica, Bourek and Dovniković himself. At 15:30 the prestigious National Film and Television School will be presented by the head of the Animation Department Robert Bradbrook. At 17:30 the screen will be taken over by the Student Competition 3 (the central screenings, with a Q&A), followed by the GC – Short Film 4 (also with a Q&A session), and at 22 h join us for a screening of Ruben Brandt, the Collector – the dynamic feature film by Milorad Krstić, inspired by crime and action genres and modern art. This screening will also be followed by a Q&A session with the director.

Gradec open air cinema at 21 h hosts the screening of the sixth block of theme films Landscapes and Architecture, working great in the open space, among the Old Town houses.

A special talk is scheduled at KIC at 18:30. The well-known panel Film and Psychiatry of the Vrapče Psychiatric Clinic, launched in 2010 by professor Vlado Jukić in collaboration with the Croatian Film Critics’ Association, is having its first Animafest edition. Inspired by the French-Danish film Egg (GC – Short Film) about eating disorders, the panel speakers will be the film’s director, Italian artist Martina Scarpelli, psychiatrist Tihana Jendričko and film critic Mario Kozina. The guests will be greeted by Antonia Puljić, who took over the organisation of the panel from its recently departed founder.

At the French Institute’s Mediatheque, three new animation books will be presented: by Olivier Cottte, Olge and Michał Bobrowski and Tom Sito. The presentation of Sito’s animation cookbook will include Animafest’s guest, the legendary animation historian and writer Nancy Denney-Phelps.

The day ends with yet another festival party, this time at Garden Bar & Kitchen, with music by Pepi Jogarde and ZAK, with an after party at AKC Medika.