What We’re Looking Forward To At This Month’s Stuttgart International Festival Of Animated Film

The Stuttgart International Festival of Animated Film (ITFS) will host its 30th edition on April 25-30.

Organizers have been drip-feeding program details for several months now, so we decided to round up five highlights that we’re most looking forward to from this year’s lineup. The full program can be found here.

1. Country of Focus: South Africa

ITFS is shining the spotlight on animation from South Africa this year. The festival will host numerous activities held in cooperation with South African events and animation companies. Among them are:

• Two short film programs curated by Cape Town International Animation Festival curator Kaydee de Villiers.
• Studio presentations from Triggerfish and Cabblow Studios.
• A workshop on establishing authentic African aesthetics on an international stage.
• School presentations from The Animation School and Triggerfish Academy
• Works in progress presentations, film talks, and workshops from a delegation of South African animation artists.

2. Honorary Trickstar

Stuttgart’s top honorary award will be given to Latvian artist Signe Baumane and the festival will host a retrospective of her early short films, including The Witch and the Cow (1991), The Tiny Shoes (1993), Gold of the Tigers (1995), and Love Story (1998). ITFS will also screen Baumane’s two feature films Rocks in My Pockets (2014) and My Love Affair with Marriage (2022). The honorary Trickstar award will be presented to Baumane at the Trickstar Professional Awards ceremony on 26 April.

3. 100 Years of Disney at the ITFS

The Walt Disney Company is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year, and ITFS plans to get in on the party. The festival will host a Disney short film program; film talks at the open-air cinema; a masterclass from legendary Disney character animator Andreas Deja; and a roundtable with Disney EMEA creative directors Shamik Majumdar and Orion Ross.

4. Feature Competition

Animovie is the international feature-length film competition at Stuttgart. This year’s competition is broken into two sections:

Animovie Feature Competition

• Charlotte, Eric Warin, Tahir Rana (Canada)
• Titina, Kajsa Næss (Norway)
• Nayola, José Miguel Ribeiro (Portugal, Belgium, France, Netherlands)

Animovie Kids Feature Competition

• Three Robbers and a Lion, Rasmus A. Sivertsen (Norway)
• Dounia & the Princess of Aleppo, Marya Zarif, André Kadi (Canada, France)
• Yuku and the Flower of the Himalayas, Arnaud Demuynck, Rémi Durin (Belgium, France)

5. Short Competition

This year’s short competition features a diverse international lineup of films from around the world that touch on themes including the exploration of migration and trauma, sexuality and gender, environment, and social anxiety and loneliness.

International Short Film Competition

• 11, Vuk Jevremovic (Croatia, Germany)
• After the After Party, Jess Mountfield (U.K.)
• An End to War Enough, Simone Massi (Italy)
• Bird in the Peninsula, Atsushi Wada (France, Japan)
• Birds Whose Legs Break Off, Dirk Verschure (Germany)
• Boat People, Kjell Boersma, Thao Lam (Canada)
• Dealing With War, Andreas Hykade (Germany)
• Koerkorter, Priit Tender (Estonia)
• False Flat, Denis de Wind (Belgium)
• Fragile Love, Xie Li (China)
• Human Resources, Isaac Wenzek, Titouan Tillier, Trinidad Plass (France)
• Ice Merchants, João Gonzalez (Portugal, U.K.)
• I’m Only Sleeping, Em Cooper (U.K.)
• Island, Michael Faust (Israel)
• Letter to a Pig, Tal Kantor (France, Isreal)
• Miles Davis – What’s Love Got to Do With It, Irina Rubina (Germany, U.S.)
• Misaligned, Marta Magnuska (Latvia, Poland)
• My Tiger, Jean-Jean Arnoux (France)
• Nobody, Job Roggeveen, Joris Oprins, Marieke Blaauw (Netherlands)
• Pachyderme, Stéphanie Clément (France)
• Passenger, Juan Pablo Zaramella (Argentina)
• Primitive Times, Hao Yu (Germany)
• Root, Elodie Dermange (Switzerland)
• Roped, Carmen Córdoba González (Spain)
• Salvation Has No Name, Joseph Wallace (Czech Republic, France, U.K.)
• Sandwich Cat, David Fidalgo Omil (Spain)
• Sasha, Serghei Chiviriga (Romania)
• Scale, Joseph Pierce (Belgium, France, U.K.)
• Sierra, Sander Joon (Estonia)
• Skinned, Joachim Hérissé (France)
• Something I Said, Sara Barbas (Portugal)
• Spring Roll Dream, Mai Vu (U.K.)
• The Debutante, Elizabeth Hobbs (U.K.)
• The Flying Sailor, Amanda Forbis, Wendy Tilby (Canada)
• The House of Loss, Jinkyu Jeon (Japan, South Korea)
• The Invention of Less, Noah Erni (Switzerland)
• The Last Bar, Arne Hain (Germany)
• The Queen of the Foxes, Marina Rosset (Switzerland)
• The Record, Jonathan Laskar (Switzerland)
• The Waiting, Volker Schlecht (Germany)
• The World’s After, Florentina Gonzalez (France)
• Zoon, Jonatan Schwenk (Germany)