13/12/2023 - The 20th edition of the Ljubljana festival has wrapped with other winners including Bianca Scali's It's Just a Whole and the first-ever VR prize at the festival for Adriaan Lokman's Flow VR

Bianca Scali, the winner of the Young Talent: Student Jury Award for It's Just a Whole

The hall of Kinodvor movie theatre, located in the heart of Ljubljana, is filled with people, and excitement and anticipation are buzzing in the air. Following its closing awards ceremony, the 20th-anniversary edition of the Animateka International Animated Film Festival, held between 27 November and 3 December, has officially wrapped. Igor Prassel, artistic director of the festival, jokingly describes Animateka as “the biggest small festival in the world” and, on that particular evening, the audience, festival team, and filmmakers definitely felt they were a part of the biggest small festival family in the world.

The €1,000 Grand Jury Prize was awarded to Misaligned by Polish filmmaker Marta Magnuska for its storytelling and clever use of metaphor by way of expressive and efficient drawings. The film was co-financed by the Polish Film Institute and the National Film Centre of Latvia. This year’s jury consisted of South African visual artist, animation filmmaker and theatre director Naomi van Niekerk, the co-founder and director of Animest Film Festival Mihai Mitrică (Romania), and animation filmmakers Dahee Jeong (South Korea), Alexandra Ramires (Portugal) and Nikki Schuster (Austria). Each of them also awarded a Special Mention to a film of their choosing in the competition, which consisted of short films from Central and Eastern Europe. 

Witty and ironic, It's Just a Whole by Bianca Scali (from the Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg) won the Young Talent Student Jury Award, whose €1,000-prize was presented jointly by the School of Arts (University of Nova Gorica) and the Academy of Fine Arts and Design (University of Ljubljana).

The Elephant Children Jury Award for the best film in the ‘Elephant in Competition’ programme, meanwhile, which was worth €1,000, went to Rémi Durin’s Head in the Clouds (France, Belgium), a heartwarming film about the beauty of nature.

Introduced for the very first time this year was the VR@Animateka Award of €1,000, which went to Adriaan Lokman’s Flow VR, previously shown in Venice’s Biennale. The movie explores the invisible nature of wind through line work and an outstanding soundscape.

The second edition of the Rise&Shine Animation Lab for young talent and their short films, meanwhile, played host to 11 projects. The first award, affording direct access to the 2024 CEE Animation Forum, went to the project Cosmonauts by Leo Černic and Tina Smrekar from Finta Film, Slovenia. The 2023 Rise&Shine Award, for its part, was won by Period Drama, a project by Michaela Michalyi and Jakub Ralek (BFilm, Czech Republic), who will now automatically receive a double invitation to the Animafest Zagreb and Animateka festivals of 2024. The project “removes stigma from this important, everyday reality,” states Saša Bach, managing director of the CEE Animation Workshop.

The full list of winners is as follows:

Jury Grand Prix
Misaligned - Marta Magnuska (Poland/Latvia)

Special Mention from Dahee Jeong
Hardly working - Total Refusal (Austria)

Special Mention from Mihai Mitrică
Sweet Dreams - Maria Zilli, Sara Priorelli (Italy)

Special Mention from Naomi van Niekerk
Eeva - Morten Tšinakov, Lucija Mrzljak (Croatia/Estonia)

Special Mention from Alexandra Ramires
Aleph - Slobodan Tomić (Croatia)

Special Mention from Nikki Schuster
Depersonalization - Spartak Jordanov (Bulgaria)

VR@Animateka Award
Flow VR - Adriaan Lokman (France/Netherlands)

Young Talent Student Jury Award
It's Just a Whole - Bianca Scali (Germany)

Young Talent Student Jury Special Mention
The Eastern Rain - Milly Jencken (Estonia)

The Elephant Children Jury Award
Head in the Clouds - Rémi Durin (France/Belgium)

The Elephant Audience Award
Muri the Cat: The Dance - Jernej Žmitek (Slovenia)

DSAF Audience Award
Hardly working - Total Refusal (Austria)

CEE Animation Forum 2024 Direct Access Award
Cosmonauts - Leo Černic, Tina Smrekar (Finta Film, Slovenia)

Rise&Shine 2023 Award
Period Drama - Michaela Michalyi, Jakub Ralek (BFilm, Czech Republic)