The world’s best cartoons in Zagreb

One of Zagreb’s trump cards is certainly the world festival of animated film: Animafest. This event will feature the best of the world’s current cartoons between May 31st and June 5th.

Aficionados of animated film already know that June is reserved for Zagreb’s Animafest, which will take place this year in several locations from May 31st until June 5th. It is one of the best known festivals of animated film in the world and it will highlight a total of 69 feature-length cartoons to its audiences; another edition of the festival takes place in autumn, which will highlight short-length cartoons. 

A total of seven film programmes will be screened as part of this year’s Animafest: World Panorama; Cinema for the Ears; Special Projections; Retrospective; Animafest for Kids; Cartoon d'Or; and the main competition, which will feature nine titles competing for the Grand Prix. The Animafest audiences will have an opportunity to see, among others, the latest film by controversial, and always entertaining, Phil Mulloy: “Goodbye, Mr. Christie”.

Other titles include the first Serbian feature-length animated film, the widely awarded “Technotise: Edit & I” by Aleksa Gajić; the latest hit from Folimage Studio, a tense thriller, “A Cat’s Life”; and another special treat will be “Chico & Rita” – a passionate love story told in the rhythms of Latin American ballads, bolero and rumba by Oscar winner, Fernando Trueba, and best known Spanish designer, Javier Mariscal. There will also be a screening of the first independent Chinese animated film “Piercing I” by Liu Jian, as well as the most expensive Swedish animated film of all times, “Metropia” by Tarik Saleh.

Within the category of Special Projections, there will be screenings of three titles: “The Illusionist” by Sylvain Chomet, “Coraline and the Secret of the Mirror” by Henry Sellick, and the internationally popular “Simpsons” by David Silverman. The Retrospective programme is dedicated to films by the member of the jury and winner of the festival’s Lifetime Achievement award in 2002, Paul Driessen; audiences will have an opportunity to enjoy 13 of his works.

The Animafest for Kids will traditionally feature screenings of short films without subtitles, while the Cartoon d'Or programme will once again represent the crème de la crème of short film production. The prestigious programme will feature five films, and provide the only European award for short animated films. The first is the Estonian film, “Crocodile” by Kaspar Jancis, winner of the Cartoon d’Or award in 2010, and Oscar winner for best animated short in 2010. Other films are the French, “Logorama”; the British, “Family Portrait”; the Swedish, “The Story of a Small Doll”; and the Norwegian, “Angry Man” by director Anita Killi, which has already won numerous awards at festivals in Annecy, Ottawa, Aspen, Melbourne, San Sebastian, Chicago and Clermont-Ferrand.