This August, the first edition of a new animation film festival Hiroshima Animation Season 2022 will be held at JMS Aster Plaza and other venues from August 17-21.
The competition, one of the core elements of the festival, received 2,149 entries from 86 countries and regions around the world. A total of 54 films have been selected for the two competitions, both screening short and feature-length films.
The Pan-Pacific and Asia Competition has a regional diverse variety, including Japan, China, Taiwan, Korea, Iran, Singapore, Malaysia, India, New Zealand, the United States, Canada and Chile. The latest films by distinguished filmmakers who now represent the region will be represented, including Oscar-nominated short Bestia, directed by Hugo Covarrubias (Chile); The Fourth Wall, directed by Mahboobeh Kalaee (Iran), the Grand Prix winner at the 25th Japan Media Arts Festival – Animation Division; and Bird in the Peninsula, directed by Atsushi Wada (France, Japan), which received Special Mention at the Berlin International Film Festival 2022.
The World Competition presents films in different categories according to the genres of their films, so as to clarify the evaluation criteria for the various works of animated art. There are five categories in this edition: “Allegories Nowaday” for fiction; “A Slice of Society” for animated documentaries and films featuring social issues; “Adventure in Storytelling” for films with a unique narrative; “Visual Poetry” for poetic films; and “The Spark: Films for Children” for younger audiences.
Chinese director Lei Lei’;s debut feature film Silver Bird and Rainbow Fish (“A Slice of Society”), selected for the Rotterdam Film Festival, will have its Asian premiere at Hiroshima. Archipelago (“Visual Poetry”), the second animated feature film by Canadian director Félix Dufour-Laperrière, whose debut feature Ville Neuve was released in Japan, will also have its Japan premiere. A Town Called Panic: The Summer Holidays, the latest in Vincent Patar and Stéphane Aubier’s series popularly known in Japan as Panic in the Village, was selected for “The Spark: Films for Children.”
The juries for the World Competition have also been announced. They includ not only animation professionals (Sarina Nihei, Koji Yamamura, Shizuka Miyazaki, Honami Yano, Ryutaro Miyajima) but also a wide variety of specialists in the fields of culture and art, including literature (Arthur Binard), picture books (Yukiko Hiromatsu), dance (Min Tanaka), contemporary art (Yuki Harada), live-action films (Kiki Sugino), music (Hiroko Sebu), manga (Kotobuki Shiriagari), documentary (Asako Fujioka) and media art (Daito Manabe, Jung-Yeon Ma).
The jury for the Pan-Pacific and Asia Competition, which consists of international animation professionals, will be announced later.
The main visual for Hiroshima Animation Season 2022 is also unveiled. The artist is Hiroshima-based illustrator shunshun. The newly created visual, which is delicate and emotionally enriched picture through line drawings, expresses multiple layers of meaning: the “water” of Hiroshima, a city with many rivers flowing through it, the “egg” representing the birth of a new film festival, and the “magic mirror” to see the many different landscapes of the world through the animation.
For more information on the competition selection line-up, jury members, and the main visual, visit animation hiroshimafest.org
Hiroshima Animation Season 2022 is an animation film festival to be held as the main program of the Media Arts Division of the Hiroshima Festival (August 1-28).
The Pan Pacific & Asia Competition
- Ma Ma Hu Hu (Liang-Hsin Huang/Taiwan, Japan/0:03:00)
- Flowing Home (Sandra Desmazieres/France, Canada/0:14:00)
- Misery Loves Company (Sasha/Korea/0:03:23)
- Red Fire (Mona A.Shahi/Iran/0:11:00)
- Wandering with NONO and PUPU (See Ek Chang/Malaysia/0:02:30)
- How I Grew Up (Yufei Liu, Yike Cen, Jiawei Li/China/0:07:43)
- Worms Ate My Flesh (Nigel Braddock/New Zealand/0:04:56)
- Modo De Vida – A Goan Sketchbook (Rohit Karandadi/India/0:04:00)
- Bird in the Peninsula (Atsushi Wada /France, Japan/0:16:00)
- Bestia (Hugo Covarrubias/Chile/00:15:00）
- The Loach (Xi Chen, An Xu/China/0:07:00)
- The Visit (Morrie Tan/Singapore/0:09:06)
- Patient’s Mind (Zhiheng Wang/China/0:06:00)
- Charlotte (Zach Dorn/United States/0:12:21)
- The Fourth Wall (Mahboobeh Kalaee/Iran/0:09:00)
- Los Huesos (Cristóbal León, Joaquín Cociñ/Chile/0:14:22
The World Competition
“Allegories Nowadays” (fiction)
Jury: Arthur Binard, Hiroko Sebu, Shizuka Miyazaki
- Tiger Is Strolling Around (Anastasiia Falileieva/Ukraine/0:12:00)
- Reduction (Réka Anna Szakály/Hungary/0:11:00)
- Helfer (Anna Szöllősi /Hungary/0:09:45)
- In the Mountains (Wally Chung/United States/0:05:20)
- Prince in a Pastry Shop (Katarzyna Agopsowicz/Poland/0:16:00)
- Confessions of an English Ant-Eater (Alex Crumbie/United Kingdom/0:05:03)
- A Story for 2 Trumpets (Amandine Meyer/France/0:05:26)
- Skinned (Joachim Hérissé/France/0:15:00)
- When You Get to the Forest (Eric Power/United States/1:12:38)
“A Slice of Society” (documentary/social commentary)
Jury: Kiki Sugino, Asako Fujioka, Honami Yano
- Salvia at Nine (Jang Nari/Korea/0:07:00)
- All Those Sensations in My Belly (Marko Dješka/Croatia/0:13:00)
- Mom, What’s Up with the Dog? (Lola Lefevre/France/0:07:00)
Precious (Paul Mas/France/0:14:00) - I’m Late (Sawako Kabuki/France, Japan/0:10:00)
- Holy Holocaust (Osi Wald, Noa Berman-Herzberg/Israel/0:17:00)
- The House of Loss (Jinkyu Jeon /Japan, Korea/0:10:00)
- Silver Bird and Rainbow Fish (Lei Lei/United States, Netherlands/1:48:00)
“Adventure in Storytelling” (unique narrative)
Jury: Min Tanaka, Yuki Harada, Sarina Nihei
- Regular (Nata Metlukh/United States/0:05:00)
- Backflip (Nikita Diakur/Germany/0:12:30)
- 3 geNARRATIONS (Paulina Ziółkowska/Poland/0:08:30)
- The Blind Writer (Georges Sifianos/Greece/0:10:00)
- My Father’s Damn Camera (Milos Tomic/Slovenia/0:06:40)
- The Primitives (Genadzi Buto/Belarus/0:10:00)
- In the Big Yard Inside the Teeny-weeny Pocket (Yoko Yuki/Japan/0:06:00)
- Darwin’s Notebook (Georges Schwizgebel/Switzerland/0:09:00)
- Swallow the Universe (Nieto/France/0:12:00)
“Visual Poetry”
Jury: Jung-Yeon Ma, Daito Manabe, Koji Yamamura
- Intermission (Réka Bucsi/Hungary/0:04:50)
- Promised Land (Andrea Pierri/Italy/0:08:42)
- Deforming after Transforming (Fukumi Nakazawa/Japan/0:08:47)
- Clockwise (Toni Mitjanit/Spain/0:03:26)
- Zoon (Jonatan Schwenk/Germany/0:04:00)
- Archipelago (Félix Dufour-Laperrière/Canada/1:12:00)
“The Spark: Films for Children”
Jury: Kotobuki Shiriagari, Yukiko Hiromatsu, Ryutaro Miyajima
- Giuseppe (Isabelle Favez/Switzerland/0:26:00)
- Spinning (Tzu-Hsin Yang (Cindy Yang)/Taiwan/0:05:00)
- In Nature (Marcel Barelli/Switzerland/0:05:00)
- Miranda! – El arte de enamorarte (Dante Zaballa/Argentina/0:03:00)
- François Couperin. The Alarm Clock (Natalia Ryss/Russia/0:03:15)
- A Town Called Panic: The Summer Holidays (Vincent Patar, Stéphane Aubier/France, Belgium/0:26:00)
