Cardiff Animation Festival announces Official Selection
Skwigly
Cardiff Animation Festival (CAF) is back for its second year, and has announced its official selection of 118 animated short films in competition.
We’re so excited to be back and bringing another jam-packed lineup of animation to Cardiff this April. Animation is an artform that doesn’t always get the recognition it deserves, and we’re really proud to celebrate it. We had so many amazing animated short films to choose from this year that we decided to add an extra programme. We’ve got a brilliant and diverse selection of shorts that we’re really excited to share. There’s a huge audience for animation in Cardiff and beyond – the inaugural Cardiff Animation Festival in 2018 was really well received, with sell-out audiences and a huge buzz. We can’t wait to do it all again this year.
-Lauren Orme, Festival Director of Cardiff Animation Festival
The festival has selected 118 short films from around the world to screen in competition for the Cardiff Animation Festival Awards. The selection features unique voices and a diverse range of stories told by animated film makers from different backgrounds around the world. Over a quarter of the films selected were made by animators of colour, and over half were directed by women.
The Bear Hunter (Dir. Sayaka Hara)
Themed shorts screenings for adult audiences will include Truth, showcasing animated documentaries like Bloomers (Samantha Moore), a moving glimpse into British manufacturing; Dare a late night screening of dark and strange shorts including gory and psychedelic revenge story Coyote (Lorenz Wunderle); and Speechless, films with no spoken or written language, like the hilarious Hors Piste (Léo Brunel, Loris Cavalier, Camille Jalabert, Oscar Malet). Films about the environment and our place in the world, like the sublime and transporting In Passing (Esther Cheung) and The Bear Hunter (Sayaka Hara), are brought together in a programme called Cynefin, a Welsh word with no direct translation to English, but which roughly translates as ‘habitat’. Heart features films about love and friendship, such as breathtaking adolescent adventure Nettle Head (Paul E. Cabon). Tamou (Tom Prezman, Tzor Edery), the story of a trans man in 20th century Morocco, and Technology for Talking (Jemima Hughes), celebrating the voices of people with hearing loss, are part of the Body programme. Mind, films exploring neurodiversity and mental health, includes Daughter (Daria Kashcheeva) an Oscar-nominated film that uses groundbreaking animation techniques to explore a father-daughter relationship. Cardiff animation studio Cloth Cat Animation has selected two programmes of animated short films for children aged 3+ and 7+, including Cats Can’t Swim (HaiLing Morgan) and The Witch And The Baby (Evgenia Golubeva).
The Witch And The Baby (Dir. Evgenia Golubeva)
The Cardiff Animation Festival programme will include something for everyone, with short film programmes, feature films, masterclasses, workshops, filmmaker Q+As, industry events, panels, networking events and parties. Previous Cardiff Animation Festival events have included masterclasses and Q&As with key talent behind Wes Anderson’s Isle of Dogs, Aardman’s Early Man, hit preschool show Hey Duggee and Cartoon Saloon’s The Breadwinner, workshops in animation and life drawing, industry panels with TV commissioners, screenwriters, distributors and festivals, and an exhibition of sets and puppets from animated Welsh feature film Chuck Steel: Night of the Trampires.
Cardiff Animation Festival 2020 is funded by Ffilm Cymru Wales and Film Hub Wales, as part of the BFI Film Audience Network (FAN) and sponsored by Cloth Cat Animation, Picl Animation and by the ScreenSkills Animation Skills Fund with contributions from UK animation productions.
Cardiff Animation Festival 2020 will run from Thursday 2nd to Sunday 5th April at Chapter, an independent arts hub and cinema space in Cardiff.
Cardiff Animation Festival passes will be on sale soon, with a limited number of Early Bird passes available. Follow Cardiff Animation Festival on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook or sign up to their mailing list for updates and to hear first when passes are released.