GRAND COMPETITION - SHORT FILM | GRAND COMPETITION - SHORT FILM 1

GRAND COMPETITION SHORT FILM

Among 820 entries, 44 films from 24 countries were selected for the most prestigious Grand Competition Short Film of the World Festival of Animated Film – Animafest Zagreb 2021. Most of them hail from France (9), followed by Spain (5), United Kingdom and USA (4) and Belgium and Poland (3).

Two Croatian films compete in this global competition (Can You See Them? by Bruno Razum and The Raft by Marko Meštrović), and a Croat was also a co-author of the only Estonian film in competition (The Stork by Morten Tšinakov and Lucija Mrzljak). Particularly interesting are the films coming from Pakistan, Chile, Iran, Israel, Taiwan and China.

In addition to the usual presence of globally important animation names, the diversity of techniques (this year dominated by classic and computer 2D and 3D animation, with somewhat less stop-motion and puppet animation, and prominent lavish avant-garde and pointillist inspirations and black-and-white varieties), visual innovativeness and opulence (the use of so far unseen methods like Lidar), the year 2021 is marked by a powerful return of coherent narrative, be it comedy, horror, musical, erotica or particularly diverse dystopian horizons among films mostly made during lockdowns.

In that sense, we notice literary strongholds and a return to ‘little things’ which shape human experience in a clash with modern-day technology. Subject matters like memory, violence and body appear prominently in animation documentaries, videos and films based on actual events.