CELEBRATING WORLD BEST ANIMATIONS SINCE 1972 – a glimpse into the World Festival of Animated Film Animafest Zagreb – a selection of award-winning and Croatian films from recent editions The World Festival of Animated Film Animafest Zagreb, established in 1972, is the world's second oldest film festival entirely dedicated to the art of animation. Its main philosophy was and is that it is a festival by filmmakers for filmmakers. Zagreb is an Emile Awards, Academy Awards and Annie Awards qualifying festival. When Nobuaki Doi asked me to curate a program to present what Zagreb is all about, in 60 minutes, very soon I got stuck. Going through the lists of our awards, theme programs, personal retrospectives, special programs and presentations of schools and countries, and picking just a few “representative” films – the total running time quickly exceeded five hours. Finally, Nobuaki proposed to show several Grand Prix winners from past editions (that should represent Animafest as choosing edgy films for the Grand Prix) along with some Croatian films (illustrating that the festival respects the history of Croatian animation). Since the festival was established under the patronage of ASIFA in acknowledgment of the creative impact that the films from the Zagreb School of Animation made on global scene between the 1950s and the 1980s, I thought this was a fine idea. In addition to those films, we included one of the films which was awarded with the Golden Zagreb Award – for encouragement of creativity and innovative artistic achievement. It is one of the most important awards for us. And if you need to put in one sentence what is Zagreb allabout – that would be it!

Z… is for Zagreb!

Daniel Šuljić, Artistic Director of the World Festival of Animated Film Animafest ZAGREB