Animafest Zagreb Unveils Six-Feature Grand Competition Lineup

Animafest Zagreb, the world’s second-longest-running animation festival, has announced the feature film competition lineup for its 2023 edition, which will run June 5-10.

Grand Competition – Feature Film

• Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, Pierre Földes (France, Luxembourg, Canada, Netherlands)
• Feast of Amrita, Saku Sakamoto (Japan)
• My Love Affair With Marriage, Signe Baumane (Latvia, United States, Luxembourg)
• No Changes Have Taken In Our Life, Jingwei Xu (China)
• Unicorn Wars, Alberto Vázquez (Spain, France)
• White Plastic Sky, Tibor Bánóczki, Sarolta Szabó (Hungary, Slovakia)

Six features have been selected for this year’s festival, joining a heap of shorts that will compete across three sections, the grand competition, student competition, and Croatian competition.

Although there are only six films in this year’s feature competition, producers from 11 countries are represented among them. The selection is aesthetically and narratively diverse, featuring stories about war, falling back in love, growing up, and family. Some of the titles feature muted palettes and minimalist designs while others employ vibrant, psychedelic colors and mixed techniques that demonstrate a willingness to experiment that can often only be found abroad.

From this year’s field, we’ve spoken with Signe Baumane about her latest My Love Affair With Marriage, Tibor Bánóczki and Sarolta Szabó about their Berlin player White Plastic Sky, and Alberto Vázquez about his psychedelic war allegory Unicorn Wars. Unicorn Wars producer Uniko also shared a ton of behind-the-scenes artwork with us.