ANIMAFILM names participants of competition program

By Azernews

By Laman Ismayilova

The 3rd ANIMAFILM International Animation Festival has announced the list of animated films and screenplays to be included in the competition program. 

The list of competition participants is available on the festival's official website.

The selection committee for animated films includes Nazrin Aghamaliyeva (Azerbaijan), Aydan Hasanova (Azerbaijan), Liz Manresa (France), Sophie Vimont (France), Nicolina Sterbet (Moldova/Italy), Demetrios Poursanidis (Greece).

The selection committee for screenplays consists of Sevinj Azimova (Elsever) (Azerbaijan) and Jahangir Selimkhanov (Azerbaijan).

All films and screenplays will be evaluated by an international jury. The winners will be announced at the closing ceremony of the 3rd ANIMAFILM festival on October 18, 2020.

Notably,  great prizes are waiting for the festival's winners in Azerbaijani categories. 

Moreover, the selection committee has decided to add new nominations: Best Azerbaijani Short Student Animated Film (up to 15 minutes) and Best Azerbaijani Screenplay for a Short Animated Film for Children (up to 6000 characters). 

Most of submissions came from United States. Countries, such as England, Canada and France were active as usual. Number of submissions doubled compared to last year. We also received around 20 films and around 40 screenplays from Azerbaijan. This makes us very happy, as it shows that animation in Azerbaijan starts to recover,” said the festival's director Rashid Aghamaliyev.

The selection committee has reviewed 433 applications from 58 countries. The committee accepted around 146 works to the competition program.

Notably the third ANIMAFILM Festival will be held in two cities of Azerbaijan, Baku and Sheki on October 14-18.  

The festival is supported by the Azerbaijan Ministry of Culture, Sheki City Executive Power, Azerbaijan Union of Film-makers, Embassy of the Czech Republic to Azerbaijan, Embassy of France in Azerbaijan, French Institute in Azerbaijan, Nizami Cinema Center, Mujru Publishing, Barat Abdullayev and other partners and sponsors.