23rd International Film Festival Etiuda&Anima has passed into history. During these six intenstive days, Krakow was pulsating with cinema. Apart from film screenings, numerous meetings with artists, industry events, concerts and workshops took place.

This year's edition of the festival started on Tuesday. During the evening Opening Gala, we watched the latest full-lenght film by the French master of animation, Jean-François Laguionie – “Louise in Winter”. It was followed by the concert of Bovska, whose song “Kaktus” is being hummed all over Poland.

On the second day, the ETIUDA and ANIMA competitions kicked off. This year, 40 student etudes and 68 animated films took part in the contests. The screening of Peter Forgacs' “The Danube Exodus” launched the series of 10 found footage films selected by Maciej J. Drygas. We also watched “The Czech Year” by Jiří Trnka, the master of Czech school of animation. Undoubtedly, the highlight of the day was the fenomenal concert of Nik Phelps and the Stanisław Słowiński Quintet, who performed live music accompaniment to the animated films, made by i.a.  Bill Plympton and Marcin Giżycki. The screenings of “Europe in a short film” series also started this day – this year's focus was on Austrian, French, German, Italian and Hungarian shorts.

On Thursday, Signe Baumane gave her first lecture in a series “Avoid Eye Conctact” on the New York independent animation scene. Another lecture was given by Kris Pearn from Sony Pictures Animation, who conducted professional workshop on storyboard and visual storytelling in animation. After that, the Austrian Tricky Women festival showed a selection of female animations in a programme “Turbulent Times & Familiar Places”. This day, the closing of Marian Cholerek's exhibition “Polish Royal Eagles from the Soviet Watches” took place in Pauza in Garden.

On Friday, it was undoubtedly Michaël Dudok de Wit who stole the show. The Oscar-winner for “Father and daughter” appeared before the festival's audience during the meeting in a series "Self-portraits of animation authors" and showed his latest film “The Red Turtle”, co-created with the Japanese Studio Ghibli. Signe Baumane also met the festival goers on a long Q&A session after the screening of her “Rocks in my pockets”. We could also watch animations selected by the Festival d'Annecy as well as short films from the Lodz School of Film.

On Saturday, we could admire two acclaimed animated film directors live – our this year's self-portaitists – Andreas Hykade, who received the Golden Dinosaur for an outstanding artist turned pedagogue and Georges Schwizgebel, the winner of ANIMA Competition 2015 for his “Erlking”. During this day, Uri Kranot from Israel showed a selection of animated documentaries. In the evening, the energetic concert of REBEL BABEL took place: L.U.C., Bisz and the Representative Orchestra of AGH UST performed together on stage in Kijów Centrum.

The last day of the festival started with screenings for children. Our youngest viewers watched “My Life as a Zucchini” and a selection of animations entitled “Out of ANIMA Competition”. Piotr Dumała took us to his dream about the eerie town “Ederly” and Bill Plympton carried us straight into “Hotler's folly”. The film school from Mexico,  Centro de Capacitación Cinematográfica, repeatedly awarded at Etiuda&Anima, presented works of its students.

In the evening, during the grand Closing Gala marking the end of the festival, the winners of the ETIUDA and ANIMA competitions as well as other laureates were announced. The Golden Dinosaur for the best etude was awarded to “Education” by Emi Buchwald and the Golden Jabberwocky was handed out to “Before Love” by Igor Kovalyov. The Best Film School of the festival became Lodz Film School.

If you would like to experience it all once again, visit our Etiuda&Anima YouTube channel, where you can watch this year's festival chronicles.

Thank you for being with us.

See you in a year!

24th edition of International Film Festival Etiuda&Anima will be held between 21-26 November 2017.