ANIMAC BRINGS TOGETHER THE EXTRAORDINARY YEAR OF CATALAN AND SPANISH ANIMATION
Donostia-born director Isabel Herguera, Honorary Award winner and to whom an exhibition will be dedicated, and José Luis Ágreda, art director of Robot Dreams, a film nominated for this year’s Oscars, will visit the Festival.
British creator Barry J. C. Purves will receive the Animation Master Award and will share with the public the themes and storytelling methods that resonate in his film and stage work.
Diversity in all its aspects will be the common thread running through the program of this 28th edition.
179 films will be screened: 8 feature films, 4 medium-length films and 167 shorts.
Today was presented the program of Animac, the International Animation Film Festival of Catalonia, organized by the City Council of Lleida, which will be held in the city from February 15 to 18. The 28th edition of Animac is warming up to celebrate the extraordinary moment that is living the Catalan and Spanish animation cinema, and will feature a careful selection of short and feature films of recent creation, monographs, retrospectives, conferences and workshops that will bring the public closer to the best animated films, this year with special interest in diversity in all its aspects, under the slogan “Diversity“.
For the mayor of Lleida, Fèlix Larrosa, “Animac consolidates us in Lleida as the capital of the celebration of cultural events because it is talent and creation, it is entrepreneurship and youth, it is training and education, it is the platform for the projection of our values. In short, we have everything to make a good project and enjoy an excellent edition”.
The director of Animac, Carolina López, highlighted the excellent moment animation cinema is experiencing both in Catalonia and in Spain, giving as an example two of this year’s guests. “We have to celebrate that a film like Robot Dreams, a Catalan production, is not only nominated for four Goya awards, but is also one of the films nominated for the Oscars, and we are lucky that its art director, José Luis Ágreda, will be coming to Lleida for a conference not to be missed,” explained López.
And he added that “we are also happy to welcome Isabel Herguera, who was director of Animac for almost ten years, and is our Honorary Award this year. In addition to screening her first feature film El sueño de la sultana, the first European animated film to enter the official competition at the San Sebastian Festival, we will have an exhibition at the Espai Cavallers with the originals of this film, on which she and her team have been working for fifteen years”.
This 28th edition of Animac received 562 films in open call from more than fifty countries of origin, including Spain with 79 films, France with 62, the United States with 48 and Belgium with 35, among others. In total, 231 films from animation schools from all over the world were submitted, 41.1% of the total number of films presented. Of these, 141 films have been selected from the open call to be screened in the different sections of the Festival. This year 179 films will be screened: 8 feature films, 4 medium-length films and 167 short films.
The Councilor for Culture, Pilar Bosch, referred to Animac‘s sensitivity to diversity and recalled that “in recent years, the animation film industry has moved towards greater diversity and the studios increasingly reflect the richness of human experiences”. The councilor detailed the different physical, intellectual and sensory accessibility measures that have been implemented at this year’s Festival, such as the edition of the program in easy reading format with pictograms, which is the first time that the Lleida City Council has applied it and which, according to Bosch, will be continued in future municipal actions.
Estefania Rufach, vice-president of the Institut d’Estudis Ilerdencs (IEI), said that “one more year, Animac surprises us with its quality and its great sensitivity to the whole world, also for the territory, since it opens windows and places us on the animation map”.
CREATORS VISITING ANIMAC 2024
The Festival will be visited by the director from San Sebastian Isabel Herguera, Honorary Award winner, to whom Animac will dedicate an exhibition that can be visited at the Espai Cavallers (from February 7 to 28), as well as a retrospective of her work and the screening of her first and award-winning feature film Sultana’s Dream (Spain, Germany, 2023), premiered in the official section of the San Sebastian Festival and nominated for this year’s Goya Awards. In addition, Herguera will offer a masterclass where he will review the film’s creation process.
Animac will also feature a lecture by José Luis Ágreda, art director of the award-winning film Robot Dreams, directed by Pablo Berger and nominated for the 2024 Oscars. An artist with a very personal stamp, Ágreda has spent nearly 25 years dedicated to drawing in all its possible varieties. In animated film, in addition to his work on Robot Dreams, he worked as art director on Buñuel en el laberinto de las tortugas, winner of the Jury Prize at Annecy and the Goya 2020, and is currently working on the feature film Decorado, by Alberto Vázquez.
British creator Barry J. C. Purves will receive the Animation Master Award and will share with the audience at his masterclass the themes and storytelling methods that resonate in his film and stage work. In addition, Animac will dedicate a complete retrospective to him with screenings of his most personal short films such as Next, Screen Play and Achilles, as well as family films and series on which he has worked during his extensive career.
Illustrator Roser Capdevila will collect the Trajectory Award at the closing ceremony of Animac and will sign books on Sunday afternoon, February 18.
The Animac audience will be able to see two relevant Catalan co-productions in production, Rock Bottom and Mariposas negras, both with a strong female accent. Producer Edmon Roch, creator of the production company Ikiru Films (Tadeo Jones, Biutiful, El Niño, Adu, among others), will speak, along with screenwriter Yaiza Berrocal, about the feature film in production Mariposas negras, directed by David Baute, which explores the theme of climate migration.
On the other hand, Yurena Rivero, coordinator of the MIANIMA mentoring program (a project of the MIA Association – Women in the animation industry), will explain how this program works, which selects feature films, series and short animation projects to help them grow with the aim of presenting them to potential partners. She will be accompanied by María Trénor and Marta Gil, director and animation director, respectively, of the musical feature film Rock Bottom, a success story of this call.
ANIMAC TEEN, FEATURE FILMS, MONOGRAPHS AND MORE
To attract audiences between the ages of 12 and 18, this year Animac Teen has been created, sessions designed for young people and which will screen the adaptation of two successful manga The Concierge (adaptation of the manga by Tsuchika Nishimura and directed by Yoshimi Itazu) and Sand Land (adaptation of the manga by Akira Toriyama, creator of Dragon Ball and Dr. Slump, directed by Toshihisa Yokoshima), as well as the sci-fi thriller Mars Express directed by Jérémie Périn, and the epic adventure Four Souls of Coyote by Áron Gauder.
In addition to the aforementioned feature films, directors Isabel Herguera’s Sultana’s Dream and Linda veut du poulet! by directors Chiara Malta and Sébastien Laudenbach will also be shown.
With the aim of giving voice to diversity, the monographic Diversity 1, 2 and 3 includes films on LGTBIQ+ issues, cultural identity, migration and climate crisis from a wide range of technical and stylistic perspectives. In addition, workshops, conferences and screenings will address issues such as inclusion, feminism and non-violence, taking into account the power of creativity and the expressive possibilities provided by technology.
One of the big names in Spanish animation that has triumphed internationally, Nuria G. Blanco, will visit Animac to present Silly Sundays, the preschool series she created and directed for the prestigious Irish studio Cartoon Saloon.
And Catalan filmmaker Toni García, a pioneer in AR applications and interactive tablet animation for series and director of the feature film D’Artacán y los tres mosqueperros, will give a talk on artificial intelligence in the production of an animated film.
CHILDREN AND YOUTH PROGRAMMING
The children and youth programming will feature three School Sessions, with more than fifteen short films selected and aimed at students from schools in the city of Lleida and its demarcation. A total of 9,124 students will participate this year in the Llotja and CaixaForum. The initiative is one of the most beloved activities of the Festival and takes place the days before the Festival: from February 12 to 16, 2024. It will be attended by 38 infant and primary schools, 22 middle and high schools and 23 high schools.
OPENING
The 28th edition of Animac will be inaugurated next Thursday, February 15, at 8.30 pm at the Llotja. During the event, the Animation Master and Honorary Animation Awards will be presented and a selection of recent short films will be screened, including Felina, by Maria Lorenzo, which will be premiering at Animac. The Lleida-born dancer and performer Mabel Olea will perform an exclusive choreography prepared for the occasion.
COMPLETE PROGRAM IN THE PRESS KIT: https://drive.google.com/
PROGRAM: Programa – Animac 2024 (paeria.cat)
PRESS KIT: https://drive.google.com/file/