Italian animation filmmaker Tommaso Zerbi brought his short film Time Flies to the Student Competition at Animafest Zagreb and won a Special Mention. A graduate of the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Turin, he later developed the film during the Re:Anima master’s programme. Built around a deliberately crude and “cheap” 3D aesthetic, Time Flies strings together a series of absurd and unsettling events that gradually reveal themselves as something closer to a carpe diem anthem. As the Animafest jury wrote in its Special Mention statement, everything is out of control – and this is perfectly okay. We chatted with Zerbi after the screening about the ideas behind the film and his future as an animation director in the era of AI and infinite content.