Animafest Zagreb 2026 Begins
Ahead of the Official Opening, Plenty of Events at Kinoteka and Exhibition Spaces
Open-air
The 36th World Festival of Animated Film – Animafest Zagreb 2026, one of the three leading animation festivals in the world, will begin with an official opening ceremony at the SC Cinema tonight at 8 pm. This year, Animafest will attract 300 foreign guests to Zagreb, screen the equal number of films, and bring thousands of viewers and visitors to cinemas and other locations. Representatives of the City of Zagreb, the Ministry of Culture and Media of the Republic of Croatia, embassies of several countries, the International Animated Film Association ASIFA, and other distinguished guests have announced their arrival at the grand opening of Animafest 2026, along with festival guests. The Lifetime Achievement Award will be received by the iconic British animator Joanna Quinn, and the Best Animation School Award, on behalf of the RE:ANIMA programme of three schools from Portugal, Belgium, and Finland, will be received by Paulo Viveiros, Head of the Animation Department at the University of Lusófona and Head of the RE:ANIMA Master’s Degree Programme, and Shauni De Gussem, Academic Bord member of RE:ANIMA and film lecturer at LUCA School of Arts. The Award for Outstanding Contribution to Animation Studies will also be presented to the American journalist, critic and animation historian Amid Amidi.
The opening ceremony is intended for protocol and festival guests, but numerous festival events are already available to the public. Yesterday, an open-air screening of the oldest surviving feature-length animated film, The Adventures of Prince Achmed, took place in the courtyard of the Academy of Fine Arts, and today, as part of the Animafest in Your Neighbourhood event, one such screening will be held at the Knap Centre (in nearby Moslavački trg) with a series of films for ages 4+ Koyaa and the Annoying Objects about the beloved Slovenian character.
Although the official openings are scheduled for later in the week, all Animafest exhibitions can already be toured from this morning at the Kranjčar Gallery (The Art of Joanna Quinn is a unique insight into the rich work of expressive animation by the Lifetime Achievement Award winner, imbued with a refined sense of satire and virtuoso drawing style; every day from 11 am to 7 pm at Kaptol 26), the The Gallery on the Floor in KIC (Behind the Scenes 8 by participants of the Grand Competition Short Film presenting sketches, paintings, drawings, prints, collages, set designs, models, scale models, studies, installations, multimedia and storyboards from which this year’s films of Animafest’s most prestigious competition were created; every day from 11 am to 10 pm in Preradovićeva 5) and the Šira Gallery (Behind the Scenes 8 by participants of the Student Film Competition; Monday to Friday from 10 am to 4 pm and 6 pm to 8 pm, Saturday 11 am to 4 pm, in Preradovićeva 13). The ‘playable’ exhibition of video games as part of the 1st Animation x Gamedev Lab Zagreb will definitely attract special attention: five games, including two from Croatia, competing for the new Best Video Game Art Direction Award (Goki’s Dream, Studio Schlamassel; Time Flies, Playables; Numbra, Hamahiru-DigiPen Bilbao; All Living Things, MOXO; The Dunkers, 5 rusa) can be played by visitors from Thursday 11 June to Saturday, June 13, from 11 am to 7 pm in the Klet Studio Gallery (Ilica 73). Entry to all Animafest exhibitions is free.
Today’s film programme as part of the opening ceremony also includes the Grand Competition Short Film 1. To be screened: the Oscar-winning Canadian puppet film The Girl Who Cried Pearls by Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski; the world premiere of the humorous puppet film Please by Anna Mantzaris, voiced by Stellan Skarsgård, which takes aim at contemporary alienation; Sandra Desmazières’s meditative biography of a Vietnamese shellfish gatherer Water Girl with an impressionist colour scheme, crowned with the French national César award and screened in Cannes; Zachary (Zak) Margolis’s visually impressive 3D ecological parable and ironic commentary on ‘personal growth and development’ How to Walk; Christoph Büttner’s Carla and Her Legs set in the Weimar era variety setting, bearing inclusive and socially critical message; the new visually intense work by Colombian-French author Nieto Um, inspired by the work of Daichi Mori. Kata Gugić will have a chat with the authors of the films after the screening. A screening of the Grand Competition Short Film 1 for all Animafest visitors is scheduled for Thursday, June 11 at 6 pm at Kinoteka Cinema.
Throughout Monday, audiences of all ages and tastes can enjoy the Animafest 2026 film programmes at Kinoteka. At 9:30, the Children’s Film Competition (ages 3-6) will be accompanied by talks with authors Adrián Jaffé (First Flight), Vjekoslav Živković and Davey Moore (Seed) hosted by Višnja Pentić, and the new sequel to the beloved Japanese series Konigiri-kun (Let’s Eat!, dir. Mari Miyazawa), The Motherless Egg (dir. Elena Walf) from the German series Lena’s Farm, as well as a number of other heart-warming images, rhythms of nature and small discoveries can be seen. Each segment of the Children’s Competition this year was once again created with the idea of what can move a child of a certain age, what stimulates children’s thoughts, feelings and questions. Artistic animated films open up a space for children to watch differently: slower, more concentrated and open to details.
Monday continues at 4 pm at Kinoteka with the first part of the ‘Focus on Slovenia’ programme titled ‘From Puppet to Puppet’, which provides insight into the animation history of the ‘green heart of Europe’, marked primarily by the brilliant puppet films of Saša Dobrila, Dušan Kastelic, Leon Vidmar and Špela Čadež, but also by the drawings of Miki Muster, Črt Škodlar, Koni Steinbacher and Grega Mastnak. Vidmar (Farewell) and Čadež (Boles) will be hosted by Nino Kovačić in a Q&A session.
At 6 pm, the Grand Competition Short Film 4 at Kinoteka brings together: a personal story by Ana Horvat, School Show, about a girl’s encounter with a pervert in the era of late socialism; a colourfully expressive, classically beautiful Brazilian film How a River Is Born by Luma Flôres about identity and coming-of-age; a new horror film by the 2021 Animafest winner Joe Hsieh Praying Mantis; reference-rich, socially critical work Like a Fairy Tale of Kiril Khachaturov (winner of Animafest’s Student Film Competition 2020) about the return of a young Russian woman to her hometown; the fiery, dynamic, metamorphic and brilliantly soundtracked film by Jenny Jokela Dollhouse Elephant about the tenants of an apartment building, and the playfully cartoonish Cosmonauts by Leo Černic about an orgiastic space cruise.
At 8 pm, day one of Animafest 2026 at Kinoteka ends with Light Pillar (dir. Zao Xu) from the Grand Competition Feature Film: a technically hybrid sci-fi (meta)film about a lonely janitor of a film studio in decline, who finds solace in virtual reality marked by disneyfication. Characterized by a stark contrast between the weary everyday life of the ‘socialist market economy’ and imagination, as well as melancholy and wit, the film was well received by critics at the Berlinale, with Vassilis Kroustallis calling it “a visual elegy for lost illusions.”
The Novi Zagreb Cultural Centre (Trg Narodne zaštite 2) will be screening films from the ‘AFN Presents: That’s What She Said’, Vol. 02 programme from today to Friday from 11 am to 2 pm and 5 pm to 8 pm. This is a new collection of works by women directors from Central and Eastern Europe, compiled by the programme directors of AFN member festivals. The collection includes, for example, the acclaimed film I Died in Irpin by Anastasiia Falileieva, which depicts the director’s personal experiences in bombed-out Ukraine, and the intense and technically masterfully executed Polish puppet film Such Miracles Do Happen by Barbara Rupik.