‘Flow,’ ‘La Voix Des Sirènes’ Win Top Awards At Ottawa International Animation Festival

By Amid Amidi | 09/30/2024 4:49 pm | Be the First to Comment!

An excellent line-up of films, both shorts and features, were presented at the 2024 Ottawa International Animation Festival (OIAF), which wrapped up yesterday in Canada’s capital city. The award winners were presented on Saturday, September 28, at the National Arts Centre.

The prize-winning feature film was Gints Zilbalodis’s stunning and mystical Flow. The film premiered earlier this year as part of the Un Certain Regard sidebar of the 2024 Cannes Film Festival and went on to win four awards at Annecy.

The $3.7 million Belgium/France/Latvia co-production is set to open in New York and Los Angeles on November 22, followed by a wider U.S. expansion in December. This latest Ottawa win should help reinforce the fact that Flow is one of the best animated films of 2024 and a real Oscar contender during the upcoming awards season.

The feature film jury, comprised of Neil Hunter (Canada), Dahee Jeong (South Korea), and Thomas Volda (Croatia), offered the following statement about Flow:

Featuring impressive cinematography and a surprisingly uplifting narrative, this emotionally compelling story never felt predictable. For its immersive plot that is expressed without the use of words, refreshing animation and world-building, this year’s Grand Prize winner for Best Animated Feature is Flow.

The top prize for animated short went to Italian animation master Gianluigi Toccafondo for his new film La Voix des Sirènes. Like Flow, Toccafondo’s 19-minute mixed-media short takes advantage of the mysteries of the aquatic universe.

The short film jury, made up of Jonathan Djob Nkondo (France/United Kingdom), Anastasiya Verlinska (Ukraine), and Ivana Volda (Croatia), said the following about La Voix des Sirènes:

This visually astonishing and timeless piece utilizes a captivating mixed media approach, with an enchanting voice guiding us through a beautifully dark and twisted fairytale. For its originality in both technique and storytelling, this year’s Grand Prize for Short Animation winner is La Voix des Sirènes.

Arash Akhgari’s In the Shallows topped this year’s Canadian short competition. The timely National Film Board of Canada production is described as “a deep dive into the shallow and fragmented world of news, entertainment and ads, where we can easily drown in the dangerous allure of mass media intoxication.”

The audience went in a different direction and chose Daniel Sterlin-Altman’s uninhibited and sexually-charged stop-motion Carrotica for the public prize.

Another funny film, Jadwiga Kowalska’s The Car That Came Back from the Sea, won the Hélène Tanguay Award for Humor. The award was chosen by the multi-Oscar-nominated filmmaking duo Wendy Tilby and Amanda Forbis, who said of the film:

Passionate, funny, and deeply personal, this film skillfully transforms a less-than-ideal political and social situation into a playful and optimistic narrative set in 1980s Poland.