Fest Anča International Animation Festival has become the first event in Slovakia to be named an Academy Awards® Qualifying Festival. Two Anča Award-winning short films are eligible to compete in the short film category at the 96th Academy Awards®: the Best Animated Short and Best Slovak Animated Short categories, giving Slovak films a boost in the race to the Oscars henceforth.
“It’s not usual for national festival awards to be qualifying for Oscar nominations. This only proves that the Academy appreciates our official selection and trusts not only our animators but also our jury,” said festival director Ivana Sujová. “This is fantastic news not only for Fest Anča but for all Slovak animators who are now much closer to the Oscars.”
The Academy’s decision reached Fest Anča organizers just a few hours before the official opening of the 16th edition. As previously announced, Best Animated Short for this year’s fest was awarded to Armat by Swiss director Elodie Dermange, while the top Slovak short prize went to Doubt, directed by FAMU (Prague) student Adela Križovenská. These films are therefor automatically eligible for consideration in the Oscar® Animated Short Film competition.
Fest Anča’s team share that the Academy was won over by the qualify of the festival’s official selection for 2023, as well as its roster of winners from recent years. Speaking to the selection goals of the festival, program director Jakub Spevák noted, “The dramaturgical selection favors a fresh film language and puts emphasis on contemporary, progressive animation, which boldly breaks down established practices and in which the author comes up with an original approach. The winners of our festival are often independent filmmakers with a unique style and quality animation. Usually, these are not the names that win at the world’s big festivals. They are new voices, new generations of filmmakers who are changing the nature of contemporary animation with their visions and stories.”
Learn more at festanca.sk.
