26/02/2014 - Belgium’s animated-film festival will showcase 15 feature films – including Hayao Miyazaki’s and studio Folimage’s latest works – and 143 short films

For 33 years now, Brussels’ Animation Film Festival – Anima has filled the Belgian capital with some of the most interesting animated works from all over the world. This year, the new edition will take place from Friday 28 February to Sunday 9 March, and will bring a huge, varied and colourful selection of films to the Flagey Cultural Centre, comprising 15 feature films that are still to be released in the country and a total of 143 short films from 30 different countries.

While the biggest titles are the ones that will have the great honour of opening the event (Japanese guru Hayao Miyazaki’s latest film The Wind Rises, which premiered in Venice) and closing it (acclaimed French studio Folimage’s new film, Aunt Hilda! [+see also:
trailer
interview: Jacques-Rémy Girerd
film profile], by Jacques-Rémy Girerd and Benôit Chieux), the feature-films line-up will also include some indispensable adult animated works, such as Italian filmmaker Alessandro Rak’s The Art of Happiness [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Alessandro Rak
film profile], American director Bill Plympton’s Cheatin’ and Brazilian filmmaker Luiz Bolognesi’s Uma Historia de Amor e Furia.

Short films, which the festival’s managers have dubbed the “ideal form for animation”, are one of the main pillars of this edition. A total of 143 titles from 30 different countries have been selected within the eight different programmes, 69 of which will be in competition. Also, this year, the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has qualified the festival, which means that the short film that wins the Anima Grand Prix can be submitted for the next Oscars.

As usual, children will play an important part in the festival, which has picked an appealing selection for them, headed up by French duo Marc Boréal and Thibaut Chatel’s Ma maman est en Amérique, elle a rencontré Buffalo Bill [+see also:
trailer
film profile]. 

The festival will also include parallel events such as the professional meeting Futuranima, different Focus sections on filmmakers or themes (such as the First World War in animated films) and the long-awaited Animated Night.