AWARDED FILMS OF ANIFILM 2015
International Competition of Feature Films for Grown-ups:
Pos Eso
(Possessed)
director, screenplay: Sam Conflictivos
designers: Aitor Herrerro, Flora Cuevas, Vic Carrascoa
Spain, 2014, 82 min 12 sec
studio: Conflictivos Productions
Jury statement:
For the respectfull treatment of homage to great classical films. To a film that delivers what it promises and is guaranted to give the audience a really good time.
Film synopsis:
The best Spanish matador Gregorio and the world-famous flamenco dancer Trini are an admired couple followed by the whole nation. The birth of their only child Damian is covered extensively by the media. But a tragic accident happens, Gregorio dies, and Trini, much to the sadness of her fans, retires. The older Damian gets, the clearer it is that something is wrong with him. It turns out that he is possessed by a malicious devil that makes him do the most bloody and cruel misdeeds. In his feature debut, director Sam Conflictivos has capitalised his experiences from the British claymation studio Aardman. His film Possessed is an excellent example of claymation accompanied by resourceful decorations and set. Conflictivos has chosen a quite atypical topic for an animated film. He was inspired for example by The Exorcist. The film goes straight to the point with bare knuckles, it depicts bloody atrocities and criticises the church but rather than being a horror, it is characterised by its detached view.
Special mention
Rocks in My Pockets
director, screenplay, designer: Signe Baumane
USA, Latvia, 2014, 88 min
studio: Signe Baumane
Jury statement:
For the gut renching baring of the animator´s soul with humor that still made us laught at a various serious subject.
Film synopsis:
Latvia, the late 1920’s. Anna, a young woman, pretty and educated, falls in love with an adventurous entrepreneur, thirty years her senior. But with marriage comes great jealousy, and the entrepreneur hides Anna away in the forest, far from other men, where she bears him eight children. The Great Depression hits them hard. Then Latvia is overrun with invasions by the Soviets, then the Nazis, then the Soviets once again. Anna is a pillar of strength, defying the hardships. But something inside her is terribly wrong. Years later, Signe, a young artist, asks her father, “How did my grandmother die?” Her father is evasive. His seven siblings are evasive, as well. Signe strongly suspects that her grandma committed suicide. Clues of mental illness had always leaked through the family stories. Signe suffers from depression herself. Three of her cousins, all women, battle madness, as well. Could there be a link between Anna and the four granddaughters?
International Competition of Feature Films for Children:
Kaguya-hime no Monogatari
(The Tale of Princess Kaguya)
director, designer: Isao Takahata
screenplay: Isao Takahata, Riko Sakaguchi
Japan, 2014, 137 min
studio: Studio Ghibli
Jury statement:
The jury gave the prize to this film for it´s lyrical beauty that takes the audience on a journey. The Princess brings us into her visualy stunning world to perfect musical accompaniment.
Film synopsis:
The original animated film by the master of Japanese anime Isao Takahata tells a very unusual story. Its heroine is the beautiful princess Kaguya who is found one day by a bamboo cutter in a glowing bamboo shoot. He takes her home and together with his wife decides to raise the fast growing beauty as their own. The mysterious princess is apparently of divine origin and marvels everyone she meets but the course of events forces her to confront punishment for her wrongdoing. This dramatic film full of fantasy has charmed the audiences as well as the critics of the whole world and brought the author – apart from other awards and several dozen nominations – an Academy Award nomination. Isao Takahata is a renowned anime director and producer but his last film partly defies this genre and uses the aesthetics of hand drawing created with distinctive draws. Isao Takahata has together with the world-renowned Hayao Miyazaki founded the Studio Ghibli. The Tale of Princess Kaguya is his first film after 14 years.
Special mention
Song of the Sea
(Le chant de la mer)
director, screenplay, designer: Tomm Moore
Ireland, Belgium, Dennmark, France, Luxembourg, 2014, 93 min
studio: Cartoon Saloon
Jury statement:
A traditional film that combines legend with modern day life and delivers a beautiful visual impact.
Film synopsis:
A father with his children, a daughter and a son, live in a lonely lighthouse in the mythical land of old Celts. Their lives are turned upside down when they find out that the daughter is the last of the selkies. Only she and her song of the sea can save all the fairy creatures turned into stone by the witch Macha. The children are torn from their lives at the sea and look for the way back. Their loyal dog is a faithful helper and companion on their voyage and together they embark on a big adventure. After the highly praised animated film Brendan and the Secret of Kells (Academy Award nomination for best animated film), brings Tomm Moore another magical story. With a gorgeously animated mythical world and a story full of hope about the power of paternal and sibling love, Song of the Sea brought the director his second academy award nomination and comparison to the biggest masters of animated film. The magnificent visual style of the film resembles hand drawing in spite being rendered digitally. The author uses a nostalgic story with subtle humour and darker undertones evoking a mysterious world.
International Competition of Short Films
The World of Tomorrow
director, screenplay, designer: Don Hertzfeldt
USA, 2015, 16 min 30 sec
studio: Bitter Films
Jury statement:
The jury unanimously awarded the Best Short Animated Film to The World of Tomorrow. A prediction of an unpleasant future, told with sophisticated humour and minimalistic design, makes this film truly refreshing. We were enchanted by the charming science fiction field trip, seen through the eyes of a child.
Film synopsis:
The visionary film by Don Hertzfeld World of Tomorrow is a story of a little girl who goes on a “field trip” to the distant future. The film about a highly technologized world builds on a simple graphic design with a clear authorial style.
Special mention
Anatomie pavouka
(Mr. Spider’s Anatomy)
director, screenplay, designer: Vojtěch Kiss
Czech Republic, 2014, 27 min 26 sec
studio: Nutprodukce
Jury statement:
A dark journey through a modern society without compassion. An inferno of one mans struggle with loneliness and despair, told in astonishing artwork
Film synopsis:
The films presents a vision of a gloomy city. Mr. Spider is a clerk working in a huge office, a voluntary slave, a lonely person lost in a maze of streets, corridors and his own mind infused with alcohol. But somewhere, much deeper, in places where the sense is about to crumble and dreams begin, there is an endless space in which fragile power beams.
International Competition of Student Films
The Bigger Picture
director, screenplay, designer: Daisy Jacobs
United Kingdom, 2014, 7 min 5 sec
university: NFTS, University of Hull
Jury statement:
An amazing execution of a very touching story. We loved the intergration of the characters into real environments and the combination of the 2d painting and 3d stop motion. A truly inventive film.
Film synopsis:
The Bigger Picture combines painted life-size characters with real decoration to tell a sad story of two brothers and their ageing mother who needs to be looked after. The film full of black humour deals with the right to fickle parental love.
Special mention
Food
director, screenplay, designer: Siqi Song
China, 2014, 3 min 32 sec
university: California Institute of the Arts
Jury statement:
Vegans and carnivores, portayed intellegent and funny. The interviewee replaced by the actual subject. A talking head becomes a talking hamburger.
Film synopsis:
The animated document Food is based on real interviews with people who have different relations to food and environment, from vegans to carnivores. The author managed to use playful stop-motion animation to capture serious topics and raise many important questions.
International Competition of Non-narrative, Experimental and Boundary forms of Animation
Fuga na wiolonczelę, trąbkę i pejzaż
(Fugue for Cello, Trumpet and Landscape)
director, designer: Jerzy Kucia
screenplay: Jerzy Kucia, Agnieszka Kucia
Poland, 2014, 18 min
production: Jerzi Kucia – Produkcja Filmów
Jury statement:
This utterly artistic film stood out for us with its impressively emotive nature, where one’s memories and the physical landscape around make up an utterly dense and intertwined, synesthetic audiovisual material, which stimulated our minds throughout the whole film, despite it’s unusual length for a short film.
Film synopsis:
Jerzy Kucia is back after thirteen years of silence with this meditative story in the form of a poetic film based on a relationship between images and music. The film shows the process of evoking feelings and searching for landscape specificity by recounting events which have taken place in the scenery.
Special mention
Fok Nabo Distorio
director, screenplay, designer: Francesco Rosso
Estonia, 2014, 7 min 4 sec
production: Estonian Academy of Arts
Jury statement:
Special mention for revealing the world of macro details where a close-up doesn't necessarily reveal specific objects but hides their true form. Fak Nabo Distorio is a mysterious lenses experiment and an improvised interplay between musical and visual rhythms of out-of-focus things.
Film synopsis:
This experimental abstract animation is based on the piece Liivaterade Raamat composed by the Estonian harpist Liis Viira. It is an improvised stop-motion animation of various objects seen through optical lenses. Cold and technical camera shots are combined with organic elements such as running colours.
Internation Competition of Musicvideos
Zhu: Paradise Awaits
director, screenplay, designer: Tomek Ducki
Poland, 2014, 3 min 27 sec
production: Kurban Kassam
Jury statement:
We were highly impressed the way this music video mixes traditional handmade technique with clean, vector-based visuals. It is both figurative and abstract, expressive and poetic at the same time and the music is translated into visuals in a masterful way.
Film synopsis:
Another music video by the young Hungarian artist Tomek Ducki. Once again, he works with vivid colours and elaborates the story of the original sin of Adam and Eve. In his version, the woman is a very important character and his method reminds of watercolour paintings.
No special mention was awarded in this category.