From today until Saturday, animation is the new black! Between 6 and 11 June Zagreb becomes its global hub and over 300 animated films, interactive installations, lectures, workshops, exhibitions and performances will be presenting all of its colours.

Cinemas Europa and Tuškanac and the Zagreb Dance Centre are the central locations of the 26th World Festival of Animated Film – Animafest Zagreb.

This year’s mascot The Substitute, the protagonist of the only Croatian Oscar winning film, invites you to the official opening on Monday, 6 June at 19.30, Europa cinema.

Oscars are one of this year’s central themes, the other being Animanarchy – Animation in the Raw, introducing the audience to the so-called punk in animation. However, these are only two out of 11 theme sections: the focus is on the competitions of short, feature, Croatian, student and children’s film.

The festival whose short film Grand Prix winners qualify directly for the Oscar run and its European counterpart, Cartoon d’Or award, opens on Monday with eight short films.

The first is the multi award-winning fairy tale based on Geothe’s ballad Erlking by the festival guest Georges Schwizgebel, followed by Very Lonely Cock by Leonid Shmelkov, a six-minute insight into the life of said fowl, and the metaphorical Winter Love by Isabel Herguera.

Veljko Popović, one of four Croatian Grand Competition authors, is presenting an allegory about a man cast out of the ‘social orbit’ in the film Planemo. The author well familiar to Animafest’s audience Theodor Ushev has got a new film – the fairy tale Blind Vaysha, and another long-time friend of Animafest, Max Hattler, is coming with his new piece All Rot.

The last two films counterpoint each other: the first is an animated live action tale Uncanny Valley by Paul Wenninger, taking us directly into the heart of the World War I atrocities, and the other is Siri Melchior’s feelgood Lili Brushes Her Teeth, a bathroom episode with a playful child and a dog.

Two awards will be presented at the opening: the Lifetime Achievement Award to Raoul Servais, the Belgian master of animation, and the Award for Outstanding Contribution to Animation Studies to the Polish director and producer Marcin Giżycki.

After the screenings, the audience is invited to the Europa cinema terrace for a piece of Oridano Gypsy Jazz and, of course, join us at all the other Animafest programmes.