The 13^th edition of Slovak International Film Festival Fest Anča is joining the ranks of domestic on-site film gatherings. The festival’s main theme flowing throughout the programme is The Day After. “We opted to portray the confrontation of numerous global and personal apocalypses and losses, the meeting of new beginnings – through humour (often black), optimism (often misplaced), and mostly keeping calm and level-headed. An approach stemming either from a rich seam of valuable life experience or boundless naïveté,” explains focus section programmer Eliška Děcká.

The Day After serves as an umbrella for several sections entailing local and international short animated films pertaining to that central topic, including Jan Saska’s award-winning black comedy Happy End, Matúš Vizár’s celebrated crash course into the evolution of pandas in the form of a sci-fi dystopia, entitled Pandas, as well as Initials-Daria Kashcheeva and The Oasis by Oscar-nominated animator Daria Khascheeva, whose award-reaping stop-motion animated puppet short film Daughter will be screen as a part of the “FAMU at the cinema” section.

The festival’s International Competition of Short Films will maintain its usual structure. Out of 1,650 submissions, all under 30 minutes, 35 animated shorts were picked to vie for the Anča Award, among them Czech award-winning tongue-in-a-cheek spin on the tale of Noah´s Ark, Sh_T Happens by Michaela Mihályi and Dávid Štumpf. Furthermore, the festival will hand out more awards in the Anča Music Video Award, the International Competition of Films for Kids and the competition of local films, with oeuvres from Joanna Kozuch (Music Box), Marta Prokopová and Michal Blaško (Wild Beast), Lívia Suchá (Spiders) or Vanda Raýmanová and Michal Struss (The Tots: Rocket). The different forms and styles of animated films will illustrate a variety of sections: Short Animated Documentary; Contemporary Abstract and Non-Narrative Animation; Anča in Wonderland gathering this year’s “most bizarre films submissions”; Anča in Mordor promising films after which “the world will never look quite the same”; and ESSESF, the extremely short section of extremely short films.

Besides the section World Panorama featuring animated films from all around the world, Slovak Panorama will introduce additional Slovak animated films produced in the last two years. “Current travel restrictions have had the benefit of allowing us to put local creatives into the spotlight: all our guests this year are from Slovakia or neighbouring countries,” says festival director Ivana Sujová. “We want to use this year’s spotlight to present artists who work in Slovakia, especially distinctive young creatives,” she adds. In addition to a plethora of domestic films, this year's edition will spotlight the works of domestic animation studio Ové Pictures – Veronika Obertová and Michaela Čopíková – who will showcase 10 years of their work.

International Animation Festival Fest Anča runs August 27-30, 2020 in Žilina, Slovakia

The full line-up and selected films can be found here.