‘Cafard,’ ‘Before Love’ Top Holland Animation Film Festival

The 19th edition of the Holland Animation Film Festival wrapped up yesterday in Utrecht, Netherlands.

Veteran director Igor Kovalyov, who has directed many well known shorts (Bird in a Window, Milch) alongside mainstream industry projects, like The Rugrats Movie, took home the narrative short film grand prize for his latest film, Before Love, which had its world premiere at Holland. The short jury, comprised of Dave Cooper, Bernard Granger, and Tatsutoshi Nomura, called the film a “masterwork,” describing it as “a lush feast of undulating light and textures that tells a mouthwatering ambiguous story. It offers as many questions as it does answers.”

Holland is unique in that the festival also gives a grand prize for non-narrative shorts, which are often overlooked when it comes to awards at other festivals. The festival’s non-narrative prize was awarded to Track by Tochka and Kazue Monno.

The World War I drama Cafard, a Dutch/French co-production directed by Jan Bultheel (pictured, top), won the feature film grand prize. Cafard’s graphic look was achieved with motion capture, coupled with low-poly models and simple textures. Holland’s feature jury was comprised of Hans Heesen, Stuart Pound, and Gints Zilbalodis.

A complete list of Holland’s winners is below:

HAFF 2016 WINNERS

Winner Grand Prix short narrative

• Before Love
  Igor Kovalyov (Russia, 2016)

Winner Grand Prix short non-narrative

• Track
  Tochka, Kazue Monno, Takeshi Nagata (Japan, 2015)

Winner Grand Prix feature film

• Cafard
  Jan Bultheel (Belgium/The Netherlands/France, 2015)

Winner Grand Prix student film

• Edmond
  Nina Gantz, National Film and Television School (UK, 2015)

Winner Grand Prix Dutch animation

• De Staat: Witch Doctor
  Floris Kaayk and Studio Smack (The Netherlands, 2015)

HAFF Audience Award Dutch animation

• Paniek! (Panic!)
  Joost Lieuwma, Daan Velsink (The Netherlands, 2015)

MovieZone HAFF Award (in cooperation with EYE)

• Track
  Tochka, Kazue Monno, Takeshi Nagata (Japan, 2015)

HAFF Junior Audience Award (in cooperation with EYE)

• (Otto)
  Job, Joris & Marieke, (The Netherlands, 2015)

Winner web competition HAFFTube

• Melting POP
  Alexandre Dubosc (France, 2015)