29th International Film Festival Etiuda&Anima will begin on 29th November and last until 4th December 2022. This year’s edition is a long-awaited comeback to the event in the traditional, stationary version.

Full program: https://etiudaandanima.pl/en/programe/

The program of the 29th edition offers short film forms lovers a multitude of attractions: film screenings, meetings with filmmakers and interesting accompanying events. The focal point of Etiuda & Anima is invariably the two international competitions: Etiuda, for the best short film, in which participants compete for the Golden, Silver and Bronze Dinosaur statuettes, and Anima, i.e. the competition between animators for the Golden, Silver and Bronze Jabberwocks. In the 29th edition of the festival, we will present films made by students and professionals, realised in the years 2021-2022.

This year, prizes in the third competition - Anima PL will also be awarded. All the films competing for awards will also be available online on the VOD streaming platform. This year, over 1,600 films were submitted to the "Etiuda" category, but eventually, the selectors qualified only 25 for the competition. Most of the films come from Europe - schools from Slovakia, Germany and Poland stand out in particular. Young artists often tackle the issues of complicated relationships, non-obvious choices, the experience of loss or change, as well as mental disorders. They also frequently talk about parenthood, love, corporeality and sexuality, exclusion, war and the oppressiveness of the patriarchal culture.

Renowned animators, among others, sent their films to the Anima 2022 competition - Paul Driessen, Priit Tender, Andreas Hykade and Ülo Pikkov, as well as winners of previous editions of the festival (Špela Čadež, Marta Pajek, Jonathan Schwenk). According to the selectors, student productions also deserve special attention: their creators are not yet widely known, but the fact that these films compete with well-known and outstanding artists proves the high-class talent of young animators. The creators of animations use more and more advanced tools offered by new technologies. Thanks to them, they can create more interesting and complex films, but also include this topic in the plot of their works, showing the dangers of new technologies. They criticize the attitudes of politicians and show the plight of social minorities and emigrants. They warn against both staring at smartphones and putting too much trust in social media. Animations are not indifferent to social and political events. From the beginning of the Covid 19 pandemic, this theme, as well as the war in Ukraine, was vividly present in the submitted films.

This year Mariusz Wilczyński will receive the Special Golden Dinosaur Award for an outstanding artist and teacher. His famous full-length animated film "Kill it and leave this town" opened the 27th Etiuda & Anima IFF during the pandemic in 2020. One of the points of this year’s program will be the screenings of etudes selected by Wilczyński and produced by his most talented students (including Tomek Popakul, Julia Orlik, and Renata Gąsiorowska).

The section with the charming title "Animation is film poetry" offers short animations especially appreciated by the Italian film historian Giannalberto Bendazzi in the choice of Andrea Martignoni and the Bendazzi Foundation. The screenings will be accompanied by a meeting with Andrea Martignoni, dedicated to the memory of Bendazzi.

Presentations of other festivals and selected European schools are offered in the ongoing "Europe in Animated Film" cycle. We will look at the films selected by the CEE Animation Festival Network, which includes festivals from Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Croatia and Romania.

The largest retrospective of works produced by the National Film Board of Canada is a treat not only for the lovers of the style of the Land of the Maple Leaf. The program of the "National Film Board of Canada presents" section will include five thematically divided animation sets of the world's most famous company producing artistic short films (including animated films).

The first set - "Pinscreen" includes animations of Jacques Drouin, created using the pinscreen method. It will be supplemented by two documents: about Drouin's life and work, and about the specificity of filmmaking with the aforementioned pinscreen technique. The second set, "Norman McLaren", includes all the most important works of the Canadian director. The third, "Cartoons" screening, includes humorous cartoons from 1962-2018, and the fourth block, "Stop Motion", presents selected animations made using the title technique. The "Women in Animation" section, on the other hand, shows the changes that have taken place in the world of animation in recent years and the role that women have played in these transformations.

Last season's full-length animated films, which had their screenings at major foreign film festivals, are another element of the program. 29. Etiuda & Anima will be inaugurated by the screening of Signe Baumane's newest full-length animated film “My Love Affair with Marriage”. The protagonist of the film is Zelma -  songs and fairy tales have been convincing her from an early age that love will solve all her problems, if only she will behave accordingly to social expectations of how a girl should behave. However, as she grew up, something stopped fitting in with this idea of ​​love: the more she tried to conform, the more her body resisted. Signe Baumane, who several times was a guest at the Etiuda & Anima Film Festival, with her characteristic bittersweet approach talks about accepting the inner female rebellion.

Among other full-length animated films of recent seasons, the program of 29. Etiuda & Anima also includes: "Silver Bird and Rainbow Fish" (dir. Lei Lei) and "Dozens of Norths" (dir. Koji Yamamura). Another important element of the program is the special screening of Tomasz Wolski's documentary "1970". After the screening, the director Tomasz Wolski, the producer Anna Gawlita and Robert Sowa, who is responsible for the animated part, will talk about the production of the film.

Additionally, during the festival, in Małopolska Garden of Arts, you will have an opportunity to see an exhibition of models and dolls made for the animated fragments of the film "1970". Last year, a discussion panel was organized in cooperation with the Aeris Futuro Foundation. "How to make a festival ecologically" listed experiences and proposals for eco-friendly solutions.

This year, continuing the topic, together with producers and ecology experts, the organizers will consider "How to make a film ecologically". The panel is accompanied by a screening of eco films. Among the special events, the "interlaced/przeplatane" vernissage, concerning experiments on the technological extension of the creation of stereoscopic animation and virtual spaces, is also worth mentioning. It will present works by Wiola Sowa, Przemek Liput and Jacek Złoczowski. For adults we plan animation workshops with the British creator Joanna Quinn and Polish creator Sylwia Nowak from the "Puppetmaker" Art Studio in Łód; for children Animoon’s productions: “Hug me. Honey Seekers" directed by Anna Błaszczyk and "How I Became a Super Villain" by Krzysztof Ostrowski. It will all be completed by the promotion of the book by Michał Bobrowski entitled “Outside the cinema screen. Post-media contexts of animation”.