The Record Scoops Top Prize at 4th Warsaw Animation Film Festival
The Record (directed by Jonathan Laskar, Switzerland)
The Warsaw Animation Film Festival has come to an end after presenting 57 short films, including 33 competing in the International Competition, 9 of them being Polish. We also invited our audiences to special Halloween screenings of Animated Horrors and presented Ukrainian films from the selection of Linoleum Festival. The jury awarded prizes and honourable mentions in three categories. Moreover, Platige Image funded its Platige Award, and we got to know the laureates of the Audience Award. The award-winning productions directed by filmmakers from China, Slovenia, France, Switzerland and Poland delighted not only with the diversity of themes, but also with their innovative approach to the art of animation.
The jury composed of: Ewa Sobolewska, Izumi Yoshida and Alexandre Siqueira presented prizes in the following categories: Grand Prix Student Competition, Grand Prix International Competition and Special Mentions. The Polish Filmmakers Association, this year’s institutional partner of the festival recognized the Best Polish Film, while the Platige Image jury selected their favourite production.
Special Mentions went to three animations. The first of them was Before Her Body Left (directed by Yuxin Yang, China). The jury distinguished its “poetic depiction of the search for identity”. The film protagonist is a transsexual woman who looks at her reflection in the mirror. Her strikingly surreal dream illustrates a struggle between her “self” and the need to express herself.
The second honourable mention was granted to Granny’s sexual life (directed by Urška Djukić, Émilie Pigeard, Slovenia and France) for “showing the violent side of the world through a relevant animation technique”. The film depicts four elderly women who, provoked by the liberated clothing style of one of their granddaughters, reflect on their memories of the old days when they were young themselves. Women tell how different the relationship between men and women was at the time.
The third honourable mention was given to Tal Kantor for Letter to a Pig. The picture got recognition for “sensitivity and courage in confronting history”. The film depicts a Holocaust survivor who, after the war, writes a letter of thanks to the pig that saved his life. As the filmmaker reminded at the beginning of the film, in Judaism the pig is seen as a dirty and unclean animal. The picture evocatively deals with the theme of collective trauma, revenge, evil and compassion.
The Grand Prix Student Competition was awarded for “creating a world balancing melancholy and humour in a captivating animation technique”. The award went to Do not feed the pigeons (directed by Antonin Niclass, UK).
The Grand Prix International Competition (the most important prize of the festival) went to the Swiss picture The record (directed by Jonathan Laskar). The jury noted “a story full of magic in a perfect, enclosed, visual and musical form”. The author presented the history of the antiques dealer. We meet him when a stranger traveller offers him a magical vinyl record that “reads minds and plays back lost memories”. The antiquarian becomes almost obsessed with the object and can’t stop listening to it. He goes back in his memories until the most painful of them is recalled: the moment when he was separated from his mother at the Swiss border during World War II. That’s where the film ends.
As many as two awards – Platige Image and the Polish Filmmakers Association for Best Polish Film – went to the makers of the animation entitled Slow light (directed by Kijek/Adamski, Poland and Portugal). The protagonist of this film is a man who is born blind. One day he regains his sight, but what he sees turns out to be an image from the past. His eyeballs are so thick that light penetrates seven years through them. Therefore, the hero will never be able to live in the present.
The Audience Award was given ex-aequo to two films this year: Zoon (directed by Jonatan Schwenk, Germany) and In Harmony (directed by Markus Svendsen Øvre, UK). The first image is a six-minute miniature, set in a dark swamp at the bottom of a nocturnal forest, where a group of shiny axolotls play their lustful games. The second film is set in a world where the only form of communication is sounds generated by musical instruments or through the body, making it difficult to make contact. The film’s protagonist is a young man who, as he walks through a lusciously green and moss-covered landscape, tries to play his rhythmic melodies to create a loving bond.
The 4th Warsaw Animated Film Festival screenings took place from 26 to 31 October in Warsaw cinemas: Elektronik and Amondo, as well as in the Ursynow Cultural Center “Alternatywy”. The event was brought to life by Polish-British award winning animation director Tessa Moult-Milewska and experienced film curator Ewelina Leszczyńska through the Ex Anima Foundation supported by Platige Image studio. This year, the Association of Polish Filmmakers was also an institutional partner of the festival.