Interview: Anim’est Festival Director Mihai Mitrică on Romania’s Budding Animation Scene

While animation has been made in Romania for many decades and the country has even produced some internationally recognized figures like Ion Popescu-Gopo, the contemporary animation scene hadn’t received much exposure until the founding of the Anim’est festival. The ninth edition opened in Bucharest last night with the Romanian premiere of The Boxtrolls and will continue through next Sunday, October 12. I’m currently here, too, where I’m serving on the feature and short film jury.

Festival director Mihai Mitrică took some time to talk with Cartoon Brew about the history of the festival, the challenges of growing Romanian animation, and the quirkier side of the festival that includes the festival’s infamous Creepy Animation Night. For more information, visit the festival website at Animest.ro.

Mihai Mitrică: I have more than one answer to your question. First of all, I am a huge fan of animation. The idea of an animated film festival came to my mind in 2004, maybe the beginning of 2005. The first time we got funds to organize the festival was in 2006, which was the year of the first edition. Another reason was that of creating an opportunity for the guys trying hard to make animated movies in Romania to be able to show their work (later on I discovered that it was not easy at all to change their habit of working by themselves, for themselves and convincing them to share their films with the audience). One more reason for deciding to launch the festival was having the audience in my mind. I was absolutely convinced that, despite the lack of animation in Romania, there was an audience for it. And I mean not just a few people. The proof is that Anim’est rapidly turned into the most popular festival in Bucharest in terms of audience. We welcome around 20,000 people every year.

I was also undoubtedly inspired by our Czech friends from Anifest, which was the first animation film festival that I attended, back in 2005. And I enjoyed it a lot!

Cartoon Brew: In your view, how would you characterize the mission of Anim’est and the role that it serves within the Romanian animation community?

Mihai Mitrică: At the very beginning, the mission of Anim’est was a basic need, actually: that of showing people that there was more than just Disney, Dreamworks, Pixar, Tom and Jerry or the Flintstones, more than just the cartoons that children used to watch on TV. Once we reached this goal, we could go deeper into the educational side and show the local animation community the new tendencies in animation worldwide, opening a perspective, giving them ideas, guiding their future career in a way. It is nice and we feel proud to hear Romanian students in film schools confess that Anim’est was the reason they chose this domain.

Cartoon Brew: In the United States, we rarely hear about Romanian animation. Can you give a brief introduction to the animation scene there? For example: approximately how large is it, how many studios and animation schools are there, and in what areas is the bulk of the work done (vfx/advertising/service work/TV/feature/etc.) ?

Mihai Mitrică: You are right. Romanian animation is still in its baby stage. There are some productions of short films, but their quality is not that high, so very few get to be selected in festivals. The most famous lately has been the feature Crulic, an animated documentary which won the Cristal in Annecy in 2012. Paradoxically, there are many production studios, but they specialize in advertising and special effects. The authors don’t have the time to make their own films. At this moment, there are very few animated feature projects and I believe they won’t be ready soon.

Then there is another reason: the lack of a school of animation in Romania. One cannot study only animation here. The Academy of Theatre and Film teaches animation alongside other specialties and not only animation. Efforts have been made to develop the section, but things are tremendously difficult. We translated our attempt of filling the gap into an annual three-week workshop of intensive animation classes. It is not enough, definitely not, but we are working on extending it.

We cannot talk about an animation industry in Romania, but we can talk about a real game industry. The majority of famous game companies have offices here and they are doing quite well, because they found many talented people here.

Cartoon Brew: Numerous recent animated features are being screened at Anim’est, both in and out of competition, but I noticed that none of them are Romanian. How frequently are animated features produced in Romania?

Mihai Mitrică: I guess I started giving the answer above. Crulic came out in 2011, after a 20-year gap. The previous feature had been The Travels of Pin Pin, in 1991. So you can get an idea of how rare they are. You’d earlier see sharks in the Black Sea than a Romanian animated feature.

Cartoon Brew: One of Anim’est’s signature events is Creepy Animation Night. Can you explain what that’s all about?

Mihai Mitrică: Ha-ha! For the sake of bringing in a common topic, may I remind you that we live in the country of Dracula, so maybe the taste for creepiness is in our veins. I was surprised that nobody had thought of organizing such an event before, I mean in animation. The films that I select for the Creepy Night are not exactly horror films, but rather bizarre, strange, unusual visual improvisations, grotesque imagery, many of them not selectable by other festivals precisely because of their extreme elements. And they fit perfectly in our program. Every year, the Creepy Animation Night has sold out. It gathers more than regular film fans or animation fans, because it offers more than films: the screenings are accompanied by live music acts. It’s more than a regular festival screening.

Cartoon Brew: What are some of the unique highlights—events, programs, workshops, etc.—that attendees will find at this year’s edition of Anim’est?

Mihai Mitrică: This year’s edition opens with The Boxtrolls, the latest feature from Laika, and closes with Michel Gondry’s animated conversation with Noam Chomsky Is the Man Who Is Tall Happy? We are celebrating 50 years of Pink Panther; we’ll have the pleasure of welcoming Bill Plympton again, this time for a nice retrospective of his works; then the latest hits in animation are going to invade our screens: The Wind Rises, The Boy with the Cuckoo-Clock Heart, Minuscule…and two weekends of children’s films. On Monday, we start working hard: we prepared two workshops: one for children and one for adults (the guys from the Royal College of Art are coming to teach us tricks).

French director Jacques-Rémy Girerd is coming to Bucharest not only to introduce his latest film Aunt Hilda!, but also to talk about the beginnings of Folimage studio and reveal his recipe for success. We gathered a wonderful selection of students’ films this year, which I hope the audience will be surprised and happy to discover. Before the Creepy Night, as a sort of warm-up, we invited Bobby Yeah and his fiends. Robert Morgan is bringing them from the UK. The survivors will taste the delicacies of the creepy screenings and will party till dawn. And the streets of Bucharest will be re-animated. We promise to stay faithful to our slogan this year: Re:Animate Bucharest!