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The poster designed for this year’s festival edition by the long-time festivalgoer Chintis Lundgren, an Estonian-Croatian artist based in France, shows the traditional festival atmosphere in the Kinodvor Café. Over countless morning coffees, evening beers and Hot Toddy cocktails, we spend the entire festival week socialising, listening, discussing and envisioning, and above all spreading and absorbing the good vibes given off by each and every member of the international family of animation filmmakers.
Each year, for twenty-one years now, Animateka has served an exclusive menu of the world's best auteur animation on the screens of the Slovenian Cinematheque and Kinodvor. After twenty years, the programming formula has been consolidated and we are eagerly awaiting the day when Kinodvor, with its planned miniplex with five additional theatres, will allow us the necessary programming transformation and invigoration. Until then, you'll have to feed on the inevitably superb Animateka menu. Since the start of the festival, the Main Competition programme has been dedicated to animated shorts from Central, South and East Europe, the European Young Talents competition programme to student animations from European schools, and the Elephant in Competition programme to children’s animations from all over the world.
This year's film programme stands out for its quality, a fact that can be confirmed by the colleagues who went with me through the difficult process of selecting from among the 800 submitted films. Indeed, also the films that will be screened in both Panoramas testify to the originality and artistry of animated storytelling. The Best of the World strand traditionally showcases the most daring and highly acclaimed award-winning international animated gems. Each year we are surprised by innovative Animated Documentaries that address many important social and historical themes. Two programmes of shorts for adults, titled The Great Flood and A New World Rising, were conceived in collaboration with our partner festival Fest Anča from Žilina, Slovakia. For the first time ever, we present the programme The Team Has Spoken, an eclectic mix of the selected tastes of the Animateka festival team. Be sure not to miss it!
In Jurilicious, we are showing the films made or selected by this year’s jury members. Joining distributor Wouter Jansen from the boutique sales company Square Eyes are the artist behind the 2024 festival poster, Chintis Lundgren, Basque filmmaker with a PhD in art, Izibene Oñederra, German rising star of hybrid animation and innovative sound design, Jonatan Schwenk, and London-based Finnish independent animator and artist, Jenny Jokela.
Each year we also offer a selection of animated feature films, and this year the lineup is outstanding. We will be screening the Slovenian premieres of seven feature films, among which I would like to highlight Sultana's Dream (El sueño de la sultana, 2023) by the grandmaster Isabel Herguera. This partly autobiographical story is an adaptation of a utopian story by the Bengali feminist writer and thinker Begum Rokeya. Written in 1905, the book describes the fantasy kingdom of Ladyland, a land where women are independent, live in peace, are educated and run all affairs of the state.
We are overjoyed at the international success of Latvian prodigy Gints Zilbalodis, who, with Flow (2024), finally let animals simply be what they are: animals. With his debut film Nowhere (Invelle, 2023), the Umbrian animation artist Simone Massi managed to paint a mosaic of fragments of personal stories that are not part of official history. Stories of violence, deprivation, but also resistance. In the Hungarian animated documentary Pelikan Blue (Kék Pelikan, 2023), director László Csaki depicts the epic journey of three friends in the early 1990s, a time when people in Hungary could finally travel abroad, even if with counterfeit train tickets. We also look forward to the Slovenian avant-premiere of Kristina Dufková's brilliant stop-motion puppet coming-of-age drama Living Large! (2024). And as the icing on the cake, we are showing Memoir of a Snail (2024), the new tragicomic masterpiece by Oscar-winner Adam Elliot about a melancholic snail statuette collector.
As a treat to round off the excellent selection of feature films, we are adding a listening & screening of the oldest surviving film by the master of cut-out animation Lotte Reiniger, The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926), accompanied by Polona Janežič on piano and keyboards. This silent classic is part of Never Like the First Time!, this year's historical retrospective dedicated to the film debuts of the biggest names in animation: from a programme of works by animation pioneers, accompanied live by the Cinematheque pianist Andrej Goričar, to the names that have shaped, or continue to shape, the world of animation. The list includes most of the former Animateka jurors. The most contemporary programme was recommended to us by the team of our partner festival Primanima.
We are also proud of our Elephant Programme for Families with an animation marathon and a series of workshops. Let me draw your attention to the premiere of the omnibus feature Animal Tales of Christmas Magic (Le Grand Noël des animaux, 2024), which hits the big screens immediately after the festival, as well as the workshop for youngsters with Leo Černic where participants learn to develop and visualise their own stories, and the workshop for children Clayland, in which participants animate coloured clay. The rich film programme is complemented by an international VR film competition at the Museum of Contemporary Art Metelkova, exhibitions by three esteemed animators, (visual) concerts, and warm social interactions at the Kinodvor and Cinematheque cafés.
This year's AnimatekaPRO platform at the Old Power Station brings lectures on the making of animated feature films and sound design in animation, and explores regional works in progress and projects by a new generation of young filmmakers from the Rise&Shine pitching lab, in addition to the traditional morning in-depth talks with the authors of the films in the competition programme and an insight into the working methods of this year's jurors.
Finally, let me extend a warm welcome to all accredited delegates and our dear local festivalgoers. I wish you all, particularly the festival team, much cinematic enjoyment and love during the Animateka festival week.
Igor Prassel
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This year’s festival trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBAmU5r2gTgTrailer for Elephant family programme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8_lSSDMofkI'm here to help you with all the information you need, as well as accreditations, details of this year's guests and interview slots. Please also find attached this year's poster, which is part of this year's festival design by Chintis Lundgren and a list of all the four competition programmes at this year’s Animateka.
