Eleven pairs of young producers and directors have pitched their animation projects in the second edition of the Rise & Shine. The event taking place in Animateka marked the end of the two-part storytelling and pitching lab, which places special focus on Central and Eastern Europe, as does the Slovenian festival itself.

Matea Milić, the host of the event, explained that the lab developed out of an older pitching initiative at Animateka, geared towards former Yugoslav countries. It has since partnered with the CEE Animation platform and Animafest Zagreb, where each year’s participants meet for the first time, taking part in lectures, workshops and group and private mentoring.

The script tutors for this edition were Pedro Rivero and Michael Dudok de Wit, with Anna Vášová overseeing pitch training activities. The jury was composed of Eric Réginaud (Head of Residency, Ciclic Animation, France), Vanja Andrijević (Studio Head, Bonobo Studio, Croatia), Luca Tóth (film director, BODDAH, Hungary), and Joaquim Pinheiro (distributor, Agência, Portugal). A selection of five to six projects are now set to be presented at the Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Market by the participants themselves.

The winner of the award granting direct access to the CEE Animation Forum 2024 was the project Cosmonauts. This Slovenian-Italian co-production is being produced by Tina Smrekar of Finta Films (Špela Čadež's Steakhouse and Boles) and directed by Leo Černic (Pentola). The Italian side of production comes courtesy of Staragara IT. Cosmonauts tells the story of three lonely characters searching for love on an intergalactic singles cruise and is a heartwarming 2D mockumentary with constant sexualized imagery and humour, aimed at adults. The jury believed that it “combines creativity, empathy and high production quality” and is, in all, “very easy to fall in love with”. Miyu have already signed up to distribute the project and, now that they’re entering production, the team are looking to pre-sell the film.

The winner of the Rise & Shine Award, consisting of a double invitation to the 2024 Animafest Zagreb and Animateka festivals, was the project Period Drama, presented at the event by producer Jakub Rálek and director Michaela Mihalyi. This Czech-Slovak co-production reteams Bfilm.Cz and Worst Films, which have previously collaborated on Sh_t Happens, which was a hit in 2019 and 2020 with screenings at Clermont-Ferrand, Venice and Sundance. Period Drama is also primarily aimed at adults, exploring menstruation through a mix of humour and surrealism. The 2D project borrows its saturated colour palette from the world of advertisement and, in the words of the jury, “removes stigma from an important everyday issue”. Still in pre-production, the director will continue her work on the script in Denmark’s Open Workshop.

Rise & Shine is supported by Creative Europe MEDIA, the Ministry of Public Administration in Slovenia, the Croatian Audiovisual Centre, the City of Zagreb, the Zagreb Tourist Board and the Croatian Film Director’s Guild. The initiative also enjoys support from the Slovene Animated Film Association (DSAF) and is partnered by Hulahop Film and Art Production.