The Ottawa International Animation Festival, North America’s largest and oldest dedicated animated film do, announced the selections for the Official Competition for 2018. The films were selected from a record-setting 2,469 entries from 84 countries including Latvia, Ecuador, Iran, Japan, Estonia, Brazil and Croatia. These include 110 shorts (including VR), seven features, and 41 panorama selections.
“The films this year are remarkably diverse, mature and provocative,” says Chris Robinson, OIAF Artistic Director. “It really speaks to the many social and cultural challenges facing us today.”
Selection highlights include both popular hits, commissioned gems and artistic indies. In Competition this year is the worldwide cult hit Rick and Morty with the episode “Exquisite Corpse,” directed by Matt Taylor, as well as Emmy Award-winning animator and director JJ Sedelmaier, known for his work on SNL and The Colbert Report is in Competition with Geico “He-Man”. Plus, four of John Morena’s Area 52 films — tongue-in-cheek commentaries on the things that connect us as human, made as part of a film-per-week challenge in 2017.
This year’s animated features include the Cannes-screened, The Magnificent Cake by Emma De Swaef and Marc James Roels (Belgium/France/Netherlands), and Seder-Masochism by Nina Paley (Sita Sings the Blues) — possibly the only Passover movie to feature singing pharaohs, and Egyptians and Jews dancing to Led Zeppelin. Also competing in the feature section are Ville Neuve by Felix Dufour-Laperriere (Canada), Captain Morten and the Spider Queen by Kaspar Jancis (Estonia), North of Blue by Joanna Priestley (USA), and On Happiness Road by Hsin-Yin Sung (Taiwan).
The competition sections include narrative shorts, non-narrative shorts, student films, commissioned works, shorts for kids (6-12), shorts for preschoolers and VR films. OIAF also offers panoramas for Canadian and international films and student works.
OIAF ‘18 takes place Sept. 26-30; more information at www.animationfestival.ca.
