Competition 9

DEATH AND MAGIC CASTLES 05:00
USA 2022
Directed by: Kari Barber
Screenplay: Kari Barber
Animation: Gabriel O'Connor
Technique: Gabriel O'Connor
Music: Katsu Suda
Production/School: River Road Big Films
Dialogue language: English
Subtitles language: NA


On a beautiful, sunny day five year old Zizou fell to the ground and died when his heart suddenly stopped. In that moment of losing my son I was thrown into the cold reality of America’s complicated relationship with death. Through animation, "Death and Magic Castles" explores traditions of mourning and loss in different cultures and follows my quest to bring death and life closer together in a culture where mourning is taboo and the goal is to live forever.



ANGRY DOGS 04:30
United Kingdom 2020
Directed by: Shaun Clark
Screenplay: Shaun Clark
Animation: Shaun Clark
Technique: Drawn Animation
Music: David Pringle
Production/School: Flicker Mill
Dialogue language: NO Dialogue
Subtitles language: NO Dialogue


When sleeping dogs awaken rationality quickly disappears



THE SPARK / Iskra 02:48
Russia 2022
Directed by: Artem Shcherbakov, Otar Berov
Screenplay: Artem Shcherbakov & Otar Berov
Animation: Anton Chistiakov
Technique: 2d
Music: Ilia Shibanov
Production/School: ZHEESHEE
Dialogue language: Russian
Subtitles language: English


An opponent, pressure from stands and feeling of fear make young boxer doubt his abilities. Once his ancestors from past times and various cultures found themselves in a hopeless situation. They face a choice - to give up or overcome the fear and move forward.



THE SPRAYER / Sampash 09:00
Iran 2022
Directed by: Farnoosh Abedi
Screenplay: Farnoosh Abedi
Animation: Negah Fardiar
Technique: 3D/stop motion
Music: Soroush Abedi
Production/School: Negative Art Studio
Dialogue language: No dialogue
Subtitles language: No dialogue


In the land occupied with the sprayers army, no one has the right to grow any kind of plants either in public or private. So many of the people and soldiers do not even know how dose a plant grows or look like, until one day one of the soldiers finds a seed buried deep down in the dust and his curiosity is just the beginning of something extraordinary, something big, something revolutionary.




THE WHITE WHALE 10:00
Iran 2020
Directed by: Amir Mehran
Screenplay: Amir Mehran
Animation: Jalal Naeimi
Technique: 2D Computer
Music: Pejman Khalili
Production/School: DEFC
Dialogue language: Without Dialogue
Subtitles language: None


Long years ago, a young man lost his friends in an air attack on a big river. After 30 years, He is looking for their remains. A White Whale is the only sign he has.



MARAM / Maram 04:18
Greece 2020
Directed by: Efi Sialevri Vicky Yagopoulou
Screenplay: Efi Sialevri Vicky Yagopoulou
Animation: Efi Sialevri Vicky Yagopoulou
Technique: Stop motion
Music: Leinidas Danezos
Production/School: Efi Sialevri
Dialogue language: Arabic
Subtitles language: English - greek


Once upon a time, a little girl, Maram, left Yemen with her family seeking for the “Land without sorrows and pains", as they considered Europe. But instead they found themselves staggering in the “Land in between”, living in a refugee camp in Lesvos. This is the story of Maram’s first day at school, when a group of xenophobic people blocked her entrance violently, locking the school gate and shouting racist slogans. The school teacher along with some parents tried to stop them and soon the quarrel escalated in front of the shocked Maram…until her classmates stepped in and restored things. Just because every time the heart of a cruel adult narrows, the hug of a child widens, we can still whisper to ourselves: "Oh my world, hold on! you are changing!".




ESTUARIES 4 08:45
United Kingdom 2021
Directed by: Bret Battey
Screenplay: NA
Animation: Bret Battey
Technique: Custom generative filter for Apple Motion
Music: Bret Battey
Production/School: Bat Hat Media


An audiovisual work of expressionistic generative mathematics, contrasting intense and frenetic textures with a gentler poetics — the latter expressed in part through visualisation the mathematical Rosenbrock function.



VOID DREAM 04:16
China 2022
Directed by: Wren Wang
Screenplay: none
Animation: Wren Wang
Technique: 2d
Music: Yilan Bao
Production/School: East China normal university
Dialogue language: Chinese


I asked a blind aunt: Do you go out when you're not working? She said: "No, why go out when you're like this? I'm jealous of those who can see. Combining my own feelings and memories of night blindness and darkness, I attempt to empathise with this blind aunt in the form of a dream in which those feelings of powerlessness, loneliness, weightlessness, emptiness, ambiguity and rustling , regardless of our identity, ordinary we are all living ordinary lives in our own way.




THE WALTZ 04:56
USA 2022
Directed by: Yulia Ruditskaya
Screenplay: Yulia Ruditskaya
Animation: Yulia Ruditskaya
Technique: 2D Animation
Music: Zisl Slepovitch
Production/School: Stephen Naron
Dialogue language: Yiddish
Subtitles language: English


Shadows from an interwar Yiddish poem by A. Lutzky waltz at the edge of a modern world as it crumbles under their feet.