(Images provided by the NFB)
May 30, 2017 – Montreal – National Film Board of Canada (NFB)
The National Film Board of Canada kicks off the animation festival season in style with five works at the 27th World Festival of Animated Film – Animafest Zagreb, June 5 to 10, 2017.
Three NFB co-produced animated shorts will be presented in the festival’s Grand Competition: the world premiere of Chintis Lundgren’s Manivald (NFB/Adriatic Animation/Chintis Lundgreni Animatsioonistuudio); Eva Cvijanović’s award-winning Hedgehog’s Home (NFB/Bonobostudio); as well as Noémie Marsily and Carl Roosens’ I Don’t Feel Anything Anymore (NFB/Zorobabel).
NFB VR animation goes underground, with a special presentation of Munro Ferguson‘s VR short Minotaur inside Grič Tunnel, a WWII-era tunnel beneath the streets of Zagreb, now restored as an innovative cultural space. Diane Obomsawin’s multi-award-winning I Like Girls will also be featured in the non-competition program Comics and Animation: Freshly Picked by Daniel Šuljić.
NFB Animation Studio producer Jelena Popović will give a presentation on trends and practices in NFB animation on June 10 at 1 p.m., while Eva Cvijanović will speak about the making of Hedgehog’s Home on June 9 at 1 p.m.
More than 800 films were submitted to the festival’s Grand Competition – Short Films, with just 44 works selected. Animafest Zagreb, established in 1972, is the second-oldest film festival in the world that’s completely dedicated to animation.
Quick Facts
World premiere screening: June 6 at 8 p.m.
Grand Competition – Short Film and Croatian Film
Complete schedule here.
Manivald, a fox, is turning 33. Overeducated, unemployed and generally uninspired, he lives with his overbearing, retired mother. It is an easy life, but not a good one. This unhealthy co-dependence changes when the washing machine breaks down and Toomas, a sexy wolf repairman, arrives to fix it, and them.
Manivald is produced by Chintis Lundgren (Chintis Lundgreni Animatsioonistuudio), Draško Ivezić (Adriatic Animation) and Jelena Popović (NFB). The NFB executive producer is Michael Fukushima.
Manivald is Lundgren’s first film with the NFB. Her previous works include the 2015 short Life with Herman H. Rott, winner of the Audience Award at the Corfu Animation Festival. She is also a co-funder of Adriatic Animation, an animation studio based on the coast of Croatia.
First screening: June 5 at 7:30 p.m. during the opening ceremony
Grand Competition – Short Film, Films for Children, and Croatian Film
Complete schedule here.
In a lush and lively forest lives a hedgehog. He is respected and envied by the other animals. However, Hedgehog’s unwavering devotion to his home annoys a quartet of insatiable beasts. Together, they march off towards Hedgehog’s home and spark a tense and prickly standoff. Based on the classic story by Branko Ćopić, a writer from the former Yugoslavia, Hedgehog’s Home is a warm and universal tale for young and old that reminds us there truly is no place like home. The film is narrated by Rade Šerbedžija, one of the most acclaimed actors from the Balkans, equally known for his epic quality in classic theatre as for his roles in Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut and Guy Ritchie’s Snatch.
Winner of a Special Mention at the Berlinale, Hedgehog’s Home is produced by Jelena Popović (NFB) and Vanja Andrijević (Bonobostudio). The NFB executive producer is Michael Fukushima.
Hedgehog’s Home is the third NFB short by Montreal-based Eva Cvijanović, who directed The Kiss (2011) with the NFB’s Hothouse program for emerging animators and Survival of the Fittest (2017) as part of the NFB’s new Naked Island Public Service Alert series.
- I Don’t Feel Anything Anymore
First screening: June 6 at 11 a.m.
Grand Competition – Short Film
Complete schedule here.
He’s a magician. She’s a firefighter. Isolating themselves from the chaos of a world in turmoil, the two lovers live in a crane basket high in the sky, where they go about their daily business. Their challenge is to keep their heads, here up above it all, while everything’s falling apart down below. But when reality calls—when fires need quenching and people need entertaining—how can they best make themselves useful in a world gone off the rails?
I Don’t Feel Anything Anymore is produced by Delphine Cousin, Delphine Renard and William Henne (Zorobabel) and Marc Bertrand (NFB). The NFB executive producer is Julie Roy.
Belgian filmmakers Noémie Marsily and Carl Roosens’ 2010 collaboration, Caniche, won the Grand Jury Prize for a first European short in the animation category at the Festival Premiers plans d’Angers. Their 2013 film, Autour du lac, received several awards, including the Canal+ Creative Aid Award for a Short Film at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival and an honourable mention at the Sommets du cinéma d’animation in Montreal.
Presented from June 5 through June 10
The archetypal hero takes a journey through seven stages: birth, childhood, mission, labyrinth, monster, battle and death/rebirth. Through purely abstract, moving images, Minotaur conveys corresponding emotional states: calm, love, joy, surprise, fear, anger/hate, and death/rebirth, leading again to calm. Renowned Canadian composer Kid Koala’s haunting, contemporary score accentuates the hero’s quest for redemption.
The Minotaur project was created in three different versions: first conceived as a 3D stereoscopic film, it is also available in 2D Dome and 360-degree VR formats. The VR producer for the project is Jelena Popović. The executive producer is Michael Fukushima.
Munro Ferguson’s previous NFB credits include How Dinosaurs Learned to Fly (1995) as well as the stereoscopic 3D shorts Falling in Love Again (2003), winner of the Genie Award for Best Animated Short, and June (2004), an elegy for his close friend and mentor, artist Joyce June Wieland.
First screening: June 6 at 10 p.m.
Comics and Animation: Freshly Picked by Daniel Šuljić
Complete schedule here.
Endearing anthropomorphic figures tell real-life stories, revealing the nitty-gritty about the first loves of four women who share funny and intimate tales of one-sided infatuation, mutual attraction, erotic moments, and fumbling attempts at sexual expression in Diane Obomsawin’s latest film.
Produced by Marc Bertrand and executive produced by Julie Roy for the NFB, I Like Girls has garnered five awards to date, including the Guy-L. Coté Award for Best Canadian Animation at the Sommets du cinéma d’animation and the Nelvana Grand Prize for Independent Short Animation at the Ottawa International Animation Festival.
Diane Obomsawin is a Montreal-based cartoonist and animator who started in the comic book scene in the late 1990s under the pseudonym “Obom.” She created her first film in 1992 and has directed eight NFB animated works to date. I Like Girls is a film adaptation of her most recent graphic novel.
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Related Products
Electronic Press Kit | Images, trailers, synopsis: I Don’t’ Feel Anything Anymore | I Like girls | Hedgehog’s Home | Manivald | Minotaur VR
Associated Links
Animafest Zagreb
Adriatic Animation
Chintis Lundgreni Animatsioonistuudio
Bonobostudio
Zorobabel
Hothouse
Kid Koala