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FESTIVALS Belgium

Brussels’ Anima Festival announces its winners

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- Extraordinary Tales and Giovanni’s Island prevail in the list of award winners at the 34th edition of the Anima Animated Film Festival in Brussels

Brussels’ Anima Festival announces its winners
Extraordinary Tales by Raúl García

The Anima Animated Film Festival handed out its awards at a ceremony that took place yesterday in Brussels. The Luxembourgish film Extraordinary Tales [+see also:
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(which snagged the 2015 Anima Audience Award for Best Feature) and the Japanese title Giovanni’s Island (which landed the BeTV Award for Best Feature) were the two main winners.

In an awards list that split its focus equally between features and short films, Extraordinary Tales (read the review), a co-production between Luxembourg, Spain, the USA and Belgium, and directed by seasoned Spanish animator Raúl García, went home with the Audience Award for Best Feature. The movie, which is made up of five chapters, is an adaptation of stories by the master of gloom Edgar Allan Poe and also introduces the US author as another character, who acts as the common thread between the five tales.

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Another veteran filmmaker, Mizuho Nishikubo, is the person behind one of the night’s other victors. His Giovanni’s Island, which tells the true story of the tiny island of Shikotan, is one of the most recent pieces of work by the famous Japanese studio Production IG, which has put its name to such titles as A Letter to Momo and The Sky Crawlers, as well as the Ghost in the Shell saga. The feature The Nut Job by Peter Lepeniotis, which was co-produced by the USA, Canada and South Korea, rounded off the batch of award-winning feature films in the international category, snagging the Young Audience’s Best Feature Award.

The jury of the international competition handed the Best Short Film Award to the Swedish production Simhall by Niki Lindroth von Bahr (a prize worth €2,500, granted by the Brussels-Capital Region) and gave a Special Mention to Tempête sur anorak, by French director Paul Cabon.

In the words of its director and programmer, the 34th edition of the festival has drawn to a close with some very satisfactory attendance figures. In the absence of any official confirmation, it is estimated that the gathering managed to draw in 38,000 viewers in Brussels and other Belgian cities. Over ten intense days in the “European Capital”, animated-film buffs have been able to savour an impressive range of animated movies boasting a high degree of variety and quality, at an event that particularly catered to children and young audiences.

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(Translated from Spanish)

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