The 19th Big Cartoon Festival announces the participants of the International Animated Feature Film Competition

This year we have an especially large and diverse lineup of feature films from different countries. Among them are many highlights — new works that have already managed to win top awards at the world’s most prestigious festivals.

There are films made unmistakably for audiences — fast-paced, spectacularly shot, gripping for both adults and teenagers, such as Arco and Chao, which took the top prizes in Annecy. There are films bright and playful in appearance yet exploring deep, hidden feelings of a child, like Little Amélie or the Character of Rain, based on the autobiographical novel by Amélie Nothomb — equally fitting for adults and teenagers — or the wonderful children’s adventure The Songbirds’ Secret, full of incredible plot twists in the search for one’s roots. By the way, this theme of identity — of searching for who you are — has now become especially relevant even in films for young audiences. Our feature competition also includes the Brazilian film My Grandfather Is a Nihonjin, about a boy from a family of Japanese emigrants in Brazil — a completely new theme for me; I had never before heard about the large-scale Japanese emigration to Brazil in the 20th century.

And of course, the competition also features uncompromising auteur films for adults: the Russian Непокой by Leonid Shmelkov, a film we had been eagerly waiting for — mysterious, absurd, funny, and terrifying all at once. And Olivia & the Clouds from the Dominican Republic, a tangled, surreal story of love, where each episode is created in a different animation technique, as if through the eyes of another person.