“Animation Connects!” is the motto of the anniversary edition of the Stuttgart International Festival of Animated Film (ITFS), which will hold its 30th edition from April 25-30. In line with this motto, the 2023 program will focus on connections between the audience, professionals, artists, talents and established filmmakers.
Across different film programs and events, a spectrum of presentations from “best of” programs to the most current films and topics will screen at various venues in Stuttgart, including the Schlossplatz and the Innenstadtkinos, with the goal of bringing the world of animation together in the German hub.
Tickets for accreditation and festival passes are now available at ITFS.de/en/tickets. Early Bird rates are available until March 15.
As always, the heart of the festival is the International Competition, featuring the latest must-see animated shorts from around the world. The diverse program showcases important themes such as the exploration of migration and trauma, sexuality and gender, environment, social anxiety and loneliness, as well as films exploring the “human abyss.” A selection of this year’s Oscar-nominated short films will also be screened.
See the complete short film competition lineup here; the AniMovie feature film competition will be announced soon.
Migration and Trauma
In Letter to a Pig (France/Israel, 2022), award-winning animator and visual artist Tal Kantor showcases a unique technique that combines drawing, photography, video, painting and animation. The story is about a Holocaust survivor reading a letter he wrote to the pig who saved his life. While listening, a young schoolgirl falls into a strange dream, where she is confronted with questions of identity, collective trauma, and the extremes of human nature.
Joseph Wallace’s Salvation Has No Name (Czech Republic/France/United Kingdom, 2022) is dedicated to the topics of migration and narrow-mindedness. A troupe performs a play about a priest and a refugee woman. As their misguided story unfolds, the boundaries between fiction and reality begin to blur and the situation escalates.
A View to the Human Abyss
The ITFS will screen the short film Scale (Belgium/France/United Kingdom, 2022) by award-winning filmmaker Joseph Pierce (among Screen International‘s “Stars of Tomorrow” in 2008). The film centers on a ma losing his sense of scale: As Will’s drug addiction gets worse, he tries to unravel the sequence of events that led to his predicament before he is lost forever.
French filmmaker Stéphanie Clément’s Pachyderme (2022) offers a glimpse into one of Louise’s summer days in the countryside with her grandparents. But the familiar is overshadowed by anxiety, sadness, and a monster so subtle and frightening.
Environment & Society, with a Pinch of Humor
In a humorous short film, the film Sandwich Cat by David Fidalgo Omil (Spain, 2022) shows us a mirror image of humanity with all its good and especially bad qualities. David himself plays a decisive role. Can we humans still be saved?
In 2031, a young female polar bear has to leave her home due to global warming and moves to Zurich. Together with the other animals who have fled, she manages to get by with odd jobs. But then she has a world-changing idea! The Invention of Less by Noah Erni (Switzerland, 12/2021) shows in a humorous and entertaining way how the world might be saved by a little trick.
Oscar-Nominated Films at ITFS
In addition to some nominated shorts that screened at ITFS last year, this year’s ITFS is screening several Oscar nominated films:
João Gonzalez was the first Portuguese filmmaker ever to be nominated for an Academy Award. In addition to the Jury Prize for Best Short Film in the Critics’ Week Competition at the Cannes Film Festival, Ice Merchants (France/Portugal/United Kingdom, 2022) received a nomination for Best European Short Film at the 2022 European Film Awards. The film tells the story of a father and his son who parachute out of their vertiginous cliff-mounted cold house every day to go to the distant village on the ground where they sell their ice.
The Flying Sailor by Amanda Forbis & Wendy Tilby (Canada, 2022) is a film based on a true incident and a meditation on the unexpected voyage of a sailor.
In addition, the Oscar-nominated film My Year of Dicks (Sara Gunnarsdottir, Iceland/U.S.A., 2022) will be screened in the ITFS supporting program.
Social Anxieties and Loneliness
In Passenger (Pasajero) by Juan Pablo Zaramella (Argentina, 2022), we accompany a man on his train journey where he gets into numerous social conflicts. He travels from the solitude of the countryside to the populated city, establishes superficial relationships with random passengers, confronts them with their social codes and finally processes these deep inside himself to find a way to adapt to his surroundings.
The dark stop-motion film Dog-Apartment (Koerkorter, Estonia, 2022) by award-winning animator Priit Tender is about the bizarre relationship between a discarded ballet dancer and his butcher, where he has a job to satisfy his voracious rented apartment. A film full of metaphor, about daily routines, broken souls trapped in a bleak world with their anxieties and hardships.
Gender & Identity
The Romanian short film Sasha by Serghei Chiviriga (2022) is about a teenager in the shape of a snail, who, confused by the whole world and the own body, is forced to discover the truth about the own sexual identity in a strange way.
