Anima Mundi Animation Film Festival in Rio

By Chesney Hearst, Senior Contributing Reporter

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The 21st edition of Anima Mundi began on Friday, August 2nd with Lapa’s Fundição Progresso as its major hub. The annual international competitive festival is held exclusively for animated films and will continue in Rio until Sunday, August 11th before moving to São Paulo from August 14th-18th.

The festival includes hundreds of animated films from traditional, to 3-D to stop motion to clay cut-out animation and everything in between.

Fundição Progresso serves as the festival’s principal site with Cinelândia’s Cinema Odeon, Flamengo’s Oi Futuro and Ipanema’s Oi Futuro hosting additional screenings.

Anima Mundi transformed the inside of Fundição Progresso with sectioned-off areas that feature several exhibits and several workshop areas, a Galleria (Gallery) that features free ongoing screenings, and three large theater areas for screenings.

The competitive section of the festival consists of five categories; Short Films, Short Films for Children, Portfolio (for Student Animators), Feature Film and Feature Film for Children.

The Short Films category alone contains over a hundred films submitted by filmmakers from around the world. During the festival the shorts (“Curtas” in Portuguese) are shown in blocks of six to eight per screening with a total of sixteen blocks of competitive short films.

There are four feature films competing for best film; Jung and Laurent Boileau’s “Couleur de peau: Miel” (France/ Belgium); Masayuki Miyaji’s “Fuse Teppou Musume no Torimonochou” (Japan); Yeun Sang-Ho’s “Dae gi eui wang” (South Korea); and Lee Dae-Hee’s “Padak Padak” (South Korea).

Non-competitive films and shorts can be viewed in additional screenings, and the cost for all, both competitive and non-competitive films is R$10 per film/showing.

Some additional shorts can all be seen in the Animated Gallery located on the second floor of Fundição Progresso where entry there is free.

All awards including the audience and professional jury awards will be presented on the last day of the festival in Rio, August 11th.

Also included in the festival are exhibitions, workshops, chats and masterclasses to educate aspiring animators of all ages.

During the 21 editions of the festival Brazilian animators have grown, been inspired and have become inspirational themselves. “Anima Mundi made me what I am today,” animation director Diogo Viegas told The Rio Times. A festival attendee since 2000, Viegas, has worked as a monitor there, won the trophy for best animation there in 2009 and even proposed to his wife during the festival.

“Most of the jobs I got at the beginning of my career were due to contacts within the Anima Mundi,” Marcelo Marão, the first Brazilian to win the mention of the popular jury in Anima Mundi and founder of the ABCA (Brazilian Association of Animation Film) said. Marão has been present every year of the festival and was honored during last year’s 20th anniversary.

“I studied with Marcelo at the School of Fine Arts and I follow his career closely since then,” cartoonist and screenwriter Sandro Menezes told The Rio Times. “Were it not for his stubbornness in making animation in the 90s, an era in which the film was retired and there was no access to computers, there wouldn’t have been national participation in the first Anima Mundis.”

Of the festival, Menezes says, “Anima Mundi is fundamental to the recent history of animation in Brazil. It was changing according to the technologies and the market and able to adapt well to times.”

For a full schedule of events,show times and venues read more at the Anima Mundi website here.