Anim’est Winners: ‘Boy and the World,’ ‘Poils’
I just returned from an awesome week in Bucharest, Romania where I attended the 9th edition of the Anim’est festival. Besides meeting lots of wonderful creative people and enjoying the warmth and hospitality of my Romanian hosts, the primary reason for attending was to watch films since I was on the festival’s jury for features and international short films.
In collaboration with the two other members of the jury—British stop motion filmmaker Robert Morgan and French animation producer Christian Pfohl—we awarded the top feature prize to the Brazilian animated feature The Boy and the World directed by Alê Abreu. The film has already been acquired by GKIDS for U.S. distribution. We gave the festival’s top short film prize, the Anim’est Trophy, to the Belgian film Poils (Hair) by Delphine Hermans.
The worksheet below shows how the three of us jury members picked the winners in the international shorts category. After we had created this shortlist, we watched the films on the list a second time to see how they held up to scrutiny and to further discuss their craft and concept. The whole process of watching the films in competition and determining the winners took the better part of five days. Surprisingly, even though each of us came to the discussion with different views on the art form, we managed to find common ground, and while there’s never such a thing as a “best” film, I think we did a pretty good job of giving recognition to some exemplary works of animated filmmaking.
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A complete list of winners is below. The awards were handed out on Saturday, October 11, at the Elvira Popescu Cinema in Bucharest. Each of the winners received one of these hand-painted sheep awards (pictured below) that were lovingly decorated by the festival staff:
COMPLETE LIST OF 2014 ANIM’EST WINNERS
Best Feature Film
O Menino et o Mundo (The Boy and the World)
Brazil 2013, dir. Alê Abreu
Anim’est Trophy
Poils (Hair)
Belgium 2013, dir. Delphine Hermans
Best Short Film
The Obvious Child
UK 2013, dir. Stephen Irwin
Special Mention for a short film
Premier automne (Autumn Leaves)
France 2013, dir. Carlos De Carvalho, Aude Danset
Best Romanian film
Pui de somn (Baby Nap)
Romania 2014, dir. Paul Mureşan
Best film in Balkanimation section
Običan dan (Regular Day)
Serbia 2013, dir. Vuk Palibrk
Best Student film
Small People with Hats
UK 2014, dir. Sarina Nihei
Special Mention for a student film
An Incredibly Elastic Man
Poland 2013, 5’, dir. Karolina Specht
Best short film for children
SuperBot – A magnifying mess
Argentina 2013, dir. Pablo Alberto Díaz, Gervasio Rodriguez Traverso
Audience Award
Oh My Dog!
Belgium 2013, dir. Chloé Alliez
Best Advertising
Rugby Bugs FMX
Germany 2013, dir. Matthias Bäuerle, Fabian Fricke, Emanuel Fuchs, Martin Lapp, Carl Schröter
Best Music Video
“Tharsis Sleeps” Throne
UK 2014, dir. Nicos Livesey, Tom Bunker