29/06/2023 - Dinko Štimac was completely immersed in Animafest Zagreb's sci-fi programme and we bring you his second story about six films from the last ten years shown across various sections of the retrospective

We’re left with the image of an entire ocean of animation after visiting this year's Animafest Zagreb. The main theme of the festival was science fiction, offered up across nine varied programmes, consisting of dozens of shorts and features. The sheer abundance of animated science fiction at Animafest leaves us with a variety of different options: dip a toe in, wade around in the shallows, search for a big catch, or just let ourselves go and become one with the sea.

The Days that (Never) Were (2021) by Kevin Iglesias Rodríguez and Pedro Rivero, part of the SF3 – Disasters programme, is a good way to test the water. This rotoscope-style animation coloured in dark tones offers a peek at a hypothetical disaster: the people of Earth are informed that Jupiter is going to change orbit and replace the moon. Panic ensues in a fashion obviously referring to the Coronavirus crisis, and a segment of the population tries to isolate itself from Jupiter’s mysterious radiation. In the end, this scare appears to be based on erroneous scientific data – humanity is safe once again. But then, mere moments later, another possible disaster looms as the Earth's surface threatens to invert its curvature. The cycle of panic starts again.

Continuing on the disaster theme, Gökalp Gönen's Avarya (2019) dwells on the dangers of over-reliance on robots, a motif all too relevant in relation to the contemporary emergence of various chatbots and artificial intelligence. In order to escape Earth’s downfall, the protagonist of Avarya builds a spaceship and an artificial companion, only to realise that he has been imprisoned by the very being he created. Bound by Asimov's three laws of robotics, this artificial companion isn’t happy to allow the protagonist to leave the ship in search of – as the robot fears – extremely dangerous new ventures. It must keep its human safe! On a visual level, the baroque style of 3D computer-generated imagery is reminiscent of stop-motion puppetry, which seems appropriate, given that both characters are essentially puppets constrained by the same three laws. Fine grains of liberally sprinkled humour manage to pull Avarya back from the absolute desperation inherent to the oppressively claustrophobic environment the puppets construct for themselves.

Robots also make an appearance in the SF2 – World of Tomorrow programme. In the Ukrainian short Unnecessary Things (2020) by Dmytro Lisenbart, android Rob, acting on a whim, decides to buy himself a human pet in an antique store. The pet, also named Rob(ert), is the titular unnecessary thing – a pensioner who feels he has nothing more to contribute to the world besides being somebody’s docile companion. The name shared by both characters eerily resembles the word “rab” (раб) which means "slave" in Ukrainian, and the relationship between the two Robs turns the classical “human master – artificial servant” hierarchy on its head, with the human ultimately deciding to put the life of the artificial being before his own. The film’s sleek and precise animation style, combined with cute angular characters, feeds into an atmosphere of soft melancholy, fitting well with the sentimental ending where Rob decides to return the favour by becoming an "unnecessary thing" himself.

Don Hertzfeldt’s Oscar-nominated World of Tomorrow (2015), which lends the whole block its title, introduces many more robots, some fated to eternally tread the moon transmitting their melancholic poetry: “The light is life. Robot must move. Move, robot, move. But why?” Using a very simplistic animation technique resembling children’s doodles, Hertzfeldt crams a plethora of themes into a small package: consciousness transferred into a clone’s body; an inter-connectable neural network; time travel; artificial thought; human essence transformed into a synthetic medium… These topics are tackled in a humorous style, even if they are inherently disturbing: protagonist Emily light-heartedly informs her younger self about their grandfather who is living an accelerated, simulated life in a cube, but when their grandfather sends a letter from his cube, it conveys sheer terror.

Consciousness transference also occurs in Gerrit Kuge’s Backup (2023), shown within the SF5 – Speculative Animation programme. The sun is dying and people of means are placed in virtual stasis while they wait for the end of life on Earth. Their bodiless lives do not seem very fulfilled, given that they either numb themselves or desperately search for ways of halting their existence altogether. The blues and violets colouring this 3D animation give the sense of a world devoid of purpose, passion or goals. Time simply goes on, the seconds falling through the hourglass into a chasm of non-existence.

Time is also the theme of Dario Kukić’s The Time Machine, screened in SF6 – 70 Years of Zagreb Film. Animated in a hand-drawn style, it is, in essence, a joke about time travel. Impatient to move forwards in time, the protagonist locks himself in a time machine. He seems to spend years in the contraption, waiting for this time travel to end, only to emerge an old man. It's a great example of the abundance of sci-fi concepts and attitudes on offer in Zagreb, all of which point to how well animation can thrive as an entire ecosystem of genre imagination and experimentation. Given, however, the vastness of this body of water, providing a contested zone for new, strange, exotic ideas, a more focused approach might also be envisaged: as it is, there is a danger that some of the festival's more potent sci-fi inquiries might end up lost at sea.