The 42nd edition of Cinanima – Espinho’s International Animated Film Festival starts this Monday with 110 films in competitive sections, 265 works in thematic sessions and a training program by world-renowned professionals.
“This year we will have a very strong edition from the cinematographic point of view, either because more than 80% of the films in the national and international competitive sessions are unpublished in Portugal, and for the technical and artistic quality of these works,” told the director of the festival, António Cavacas.
After beating for the fourth consecutive year its record of registrations, this time with 1508 applications from 69 countries, the event that runs until November 18 will present in the international competition 36 school films, 44 short films and 4 films. Among all these works, 15 will appear in absolute debut.
Regarding the national competition, the Cinanima 2018 will have eight contestants to the António Gaio Prize, which distinguishes the best national film, and will also count with 18 candidates for the Young Portuguese Film Award, which includes a category for directors up to 17 years and another for directors from 18 to 30.
The thematic sessions, in turn, start by focusing on a retrospective on Serbia’s production and in honour of Nikola Majdak (1927-2013), one of the leading filmmakers in that country. They will also highlight the creation of the National Film School of Ireland, the leading Slovakian films of the last 25 years, children’s films produced in Norway and Stuttgart, and the contemporary animation of Ukraine, Finland, Poland and Lithuania.
For António Cavacas, Cinanima returns to collaborate with festivals from other countries to “show unusual films”, but also does not forget the more personalized creation of author by promoting more restricted sessions such as the “Animation in Women” program, with works selected by the Portuguese director Regina Pessoa.
Finally, as far as the formative component of the festival is concerned, it will be distributed in different halls of Espinho, Porto and Matosinhos, and will highlight the masterclass of the director and graphic designer Filipe Carvalho, who this year won an Emmy of American Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for the genre he created for the science fiction series “Counterpart”, starring the Oscar-winning actor JKSimmons.
Other professionals who will share their knowledge with registered participants are: Dutch filmmaker Willem Thijssen, animation producer and documentary filmmaker; the Czech director Vera Neubauer, already awarded two BAFTA awards from the British Academy of Cinema and Television Arts; the Belgian Nancy Denney-Phelps, historian on animation and producer of music in that cinematographic record; and the Estonian director and screenwriter Riho Unt, whose film “The Master” of 2015 was awarded a total of 18 international awards.
“The training is one of the most important aspects of the Cinanima, which, during the days of the festival, offers several ‘workshops’ and ‘masterclasses’ with guests of international renown,” acknowledges António Cavacas.
“The goal is to give not only young people but also other professionals – some with careers already done – the possibility to deepen their knowledge about the history and the different techniques of animation cinema,” he concludes.
“Another day of life”, a film by Raúl de la Fuente and Damian Nenow, which combines animated action with the real documentary image, inspired by the eponymous book by the Polish reporter Ryszard Kapuscinski, about the Angolan civil war, is shown at the opening of the festival.
The film was released this week in Portugal. He was in May in the official selection of the Cannes film festival in France and in September won the Audience Award at the San Sebastian Festival in Spain.
