The 2023 edition of Zagreb’s Animafest drew to a close on Saturday with a festive awards ceremony. Varya Yakovleva’s Oneluv won the Short Film Grand Prix, while Joseph Pierce’s Scale took home the Golden Zagreb Award for Creativity and Innovative Artistic Achievement. Signe Baumane’s My Love Affair with Marriage continued its successful festival run by winning the Grand Prize for Best Animated Feature.
The jury of the Grand Competition Short Film (Hugo Covarrubias, Hisko Hulsing, Tal Kantor, Aneta Ozorek and Vuk Jevremović) noted that the Grand prix of the festival went to Oneluv which is about the shift in the game of power between victim and perpetrator told with imperfections, dirt and shivering style magnifying the story of abuse. The same jury also noted that the Golden Zagreb Award was given to Scale because of its emotional depiction of alienation caused by addiction.
The feature film jury, which consisted of Mohamed Ghazala, Ivana Guljašević Kuman and Ferenc Mikulás said they picked Baumane’s My Love Affair with Marriage “because of its special animation language. Both the animation and the design are beautifully done, and they are also delivered in a simple way. By doing so the complexity of the emotion of the movie’s topic becomes more tangible. Also, the storyline in question has already been told many times, but this time in a completely new and refreshing way.”
The prize winners also included:
- Stephen Vuillemin’s A Kind of Testament (Remembers): Winner of the Zlatko Grgić Award for the Best First Film Made Outside an Educational Institute
- Special Jury Awards: Compound Eyes of Tropical (熱帶複眼) by Zhang Xu Zhan (produced by Zhan Zhan Xi Qi) Mariupol. A Hundred Nights by Sofiia Melnyk (produced by Gogol Fest) The World’s After by Florentina Gonzalez (produced by Autour de Minuit) The Garden of Heart by Olivér Hegyi (produced by CUB Animation and Artichoke) Our Pain by Shunsaku Hayashi’s (Hayashi) White Plastic Sky by Tibor Bánóczki and Sarolta Szabó (produced by Salto Films and Artichoke)
- Above the Clouds by Vivien Hárshegyi (produced at Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design Budapest): Winner of the Dušan Vukotić for Best Student Film Award
- Special Mentions: Sewing Love by Xu Yuan (Tama Art University); Fur by Zhen Li (California Institute of the Arts)
- Eeva by Lucija Mrzljak and Morten Tšinakov (Eesti Joonisfilm and Adriatic Animation):Best Film of the Croatian Film Competition
- All Unsaved Progress Will Be Lost by Mélanie Courtinat: Best VR Animation
- Socks for the Star by Olga Titova (SMF animation studio): Best in the Children’s Shorts Competition
- Ice Merchants by João Gonzalez (COLA Animation, Wildstream and Royal College of Art): Audience Award
The 34th World Festival of Animated Film – Animafest Zagreb will be held June 3rd-8th, 2024. For more info, visit animafest.hr
Watch the trailers for the top winners below:
