Anima, the Brussels International Animation Festival (Feb. 24-Mar. 5, 2017 in Flagey) is gearing up for its annual spring fling. This year, the Festival will present focuses on Italian and Portuguese animation on top of its international feature competition, and international/national shorts and graduate film competitions — organizers expect close to 300 films for the official selection.
The list of short films in competition is available at www.animafestival.be. Part of the Anima program will tour to Liege, Namur, Chaleroi, Mons, Antwerp, Ghent and Louvain.
Feature film highlights will include kid-friendly fare Snowtime! (Jean-François Pouliot and François Brisson, Canada), The Big Cheese Race (Rasmus Sivertsen, Denmark) and Rabbit School (Ute von Münchow-Pohl, Germany). For the grown-ups, unique viewpoints can be found in Bill Plympton’s Revengeance (US), Window Horses by Ann Marie Fleming (NFB Canada), Ethel and Ernest by Roger Mainwood (Lupus Films, UK) or In This Corner of the World by Sunao Katabuchi (MAPPA, Japan).
Acclaimed stop-motion house LAIKA (Coraline, ParaNorman, The Boxtrolls, Kubo and the Two Strings) will be presenting a conference session on its studio and filmmaking skills with Mark Shapiro. And for the first time ever, VR enters the picture as the Festival hosts the EXPERIENCE Brussels Virtual Reality Festival — nine days of specially curated animated films created in partnership with Anima.
Finally, the Futuranima professional days (Feb. 27 – Mar. 4) will host a number of international guests discussing their latest productions. Already confirmed are: Arthur de Pins for the adaptation of his comic book Zombillenium into an animated feature, Sébastien Laudenbach for his feature The Girl Without Hands, Alessandro Rak for Cinderella the Cat and Benjamin Renner for the animated series The Big Bad Fox.
On top of screenings and special events, Anima offers free animation workshops for kids, a week-long course for teens, meetings with filmmakers, exhibition, concerts, open-air screenings, a psychedelic Animated Night and entertaining installations.
Full program details will be announced on February 1.
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