Animation

A routine tree inspection unexpectedly gives way to a journey into the deep. Set in a hidden subterranean world, ‘Sub Terra’ is the haunting mystery of a cryptic first-person perspective.

Once upon a time, the Mucklas could be found everywhere. But in an increasingly tidy world, the cheerful goblins have a hard time, since they love disorder more than anything. Soon the last tribe will have to leave their home. For generations, the little creatures have made themselves at home unnoticed in Hansson's old, chaotic grocer's store. In the wonderful mess, they find everything they need to live, tinker and make mischief. But Hansson's successor, Karl the exterminator, turns the paradise into a tiled and sterile nightmare. So Svunja, Tjorben and Smartö set off on a dangerous search for the promised land. The great adventure begins

Animated version of a famous Hungarian epic tale by János Arany. Through the story of Miklós Toldi, we witness a brutal young man learning to master his strength and inner struggles to become King Louis I’s most famous knight. Toldi clashes with his scheming elder brother and travels from the marshlands to 14th-century Pest, fighting every challenge to prove his honor. His journey of self-discovery and courage unfolds against the rich backdrop of the chivalric world and the Hungarian plains.

Friendship is the story of two childhood friends who bond together despite their different personalities and ethnicities. The short film spans their lifelong journey and portrays how they sustain their connection through challenges, celebrations, and the test of time.

Two sisters travel to the realm of clouds on a paper plane. They are looking for the big tree with the golden leaf. Their plane has to be mended again and again, and the big sister is worried. When she falls ill, the little sister takes control. Slowly they get closer to each other and their goal on this arduous journey.

Ship ahoy, the musifants are back! This time, Charlie and Grandpa Günter get mail from the small green cactus in New Zealand and set sail with Fox and Captain Krause. On the way, they fish the little wild sow Svenja from the sea and sing their special shanty. The waves rise when the retired circus elephant makes musical forays into 1920s and 1930s song collections.

The yellow banana beckons from the fruit basket; it’s peeled in no time and about to disappear in the mouth. But stop! Before you can at last take the first bite, you have to share. The banana becomes smaller and smaller. The elephant, too, wants a piece of the sweet fruit. A piece for you, a piece for me … A little film about the joys of sharing.

Felix Leffrank deals with the ups and downs of an artist’s life in colourful, computer-animated images. During his ordeal between depression, writer’s block, anger and urban loneliness, a story-teller is accompanied by three weird birds who sometimes appear as annoying neighbours, sometimes as inner demons. Jung, Freud and the psychologist Dr. Breuer in the shape of a grey cat promote self-reflection, but the most helpful thing is probably a beer with friends.

What does it mean to make an animated film accessible to people with impaired vision? Can audio description convey what’s happening on the screen and what is, especially in animated film, often entirely a product of the imagination? Anne Isensee (Golden Dove for “Megatrick” in 2017) tackles these complex questions with a light touch, humour and verbal wit. She pulls off the feat of producing a concentrated cinematic investigation into the multi-layered quality of (all) perception.

His mother starts drinking when he is eight years old. Jan Koester projects photos from his childhood on his own body that tell of loneliness and helplessness in toxic relationships. These Rorschach-like superimposed images put physical abstractions in relation to their violent and alienated surroundings. Shifting between fluid and halting movements, telescoped pixels tugging at each other deconstruct predominant gender norms.

Because his single mother criticised the state, Alex was sent to a special children’s home at the age of eleven, in order to shape him – like almost 500,000 children in the GDR – into a “socialist personality”. He escaped and ended up as a punishment at the Torgau Closed Juvenile Detention Centre, more prison than social institution. His life was now dominated by military drill and violence … Reduced rotoscope images follow Alex’s memories and show how the trauma affects him even today.

Her “artificial assistant” is what Claudia Larcher calls the AI that digitally analysed her analogue “Baumeister” series of collages and generated this film from them. Creator or servant spirit, the machine makes architectural sketches waft biomorphically and enlivens (i.e. animates) rigid shapes. The Japanese Metabolists who called for the fluid renewal of their buildings, the organic growth, deformation and decay of architecture, would have liked “The Artist in the Machine”.

When they meet in a gift shop on The Great Barrier Reef, souvenir kangaroo Ruby (Rose Byrne) and toy unicorn Louie (Will Arnett) form an unlikely friendship. Watch as Ruby takes Louie on an amazing adventure around Australia, visiting iconic sites, including Melbourne's laneways and stunning natural landscapes such as Nitmiluk Gorge. They'll discover new experiences, connect with Indigenous cultures, and, along the way, learn the true meaning of an Aussie welcome.

Bizarre animations of strange beauty on a metal plate, set to Free Jazz. Light reflexes. Lines and circles that take on human or insect form, merge and dissolve. Sometimes a voice from offscreen gives directions, demands a new plate. Then everything starts again – but differently. The realization dawns slowly: This is an expedition to an underworld that generates silently communicating ghost lights.

A respected chef from a lineage of sushi makers attempts to connect with his son through the shared knowledge of the family trade. Tensions arise as he begins to notice a strange pattern of behavior in the young boy.

A young girl is forced to share her family home with her abuser.

A man is waiting for some test results. He expects the worst but at the same time hopes for the best. He spends a week in a limbo of his own creation, neither here nor there, dreading the things that haven't happened yet.

The untold story of the other boss of Chicago, the King of Policy Kings, a man who held too much power and wealth during segregation.

Short animated musical performance of a work by Valentin Silvestrov based on Taras Shevchenko's verses, combined with animation of each line of the poem by different young directors.