Get to know the films that will take part in the competition related to the slogan of this year’s Animator, namely “Rotamine – the chemistry in us”!
This year the festival is accompanied by the slogan “Rotamine - the chemistry within us”. This is also the theme of the Open Call Thematic Competition, in which 25 productions will be presented. They will take us on a journey inside our bodies and try to explore the phenomena that take place in them - from chemical compounds to biological changes.
1) Alike Kin, Michel Esselbrügge, Jannis Esselbrügge, Germany, 2024
Alike Kin unfolds in a future where strange new life thrives in the remains of the present world. Stop-motion animation combines mud, metal, plants, and tech scraps into an ever-evolving, pulsating network. This tactile, handmade aesthetic creates a vision of a world that is raw, collaborative, and constantly in motion.
2) And don’t call me crazy, Dorota Skupniewicz, Poland, 2024
The Protagonist is a psychiatric survivor. Facing to hospital institution recalling a Kafka’s ‘The Trial’, situation with no exit. Just the decision to break through thorny bushes of reality appears as a rescue. The Protagonist meets alternative views of persons-birds focused on changes. The choice is a path divided for two. She can agree with actual situation or further batle, based on the causes for fight, including redefinition of mental disease.
3) Anxious Body, Yoriko Mizushiri, France, Japan, 2021
Living things, artificial things, geometry shapes, and lines. When these different things encounter, a new direction is born.
4) Body Burden, Benjamin Fox, United Kingdom, 2025
A dark, tactile and contaminated film. Toxic chemicals and pollutants build up within the human body. A spray painted animation on paper.
5) Candy Shop, Patrick Smith, USA 2019
Pills and capsules are choreographed into a cacophony of shape, color and size, resulting in a satirical commentary about our cultural, recreational, and economic infatuation with prescription drugs.
6) Cannot sleep!, reż. Yingjie Zhou, Japan, 2024
Sleep in the same state as before. A wonderful and magical economic experiment where one's head changes and one's head falls. Finally, the appearance of the image is reduced.
7) Caves of Our Insides, Sabīne Šnē, Latvia, 2024
Caves of Our Insides explores our connections to the Earth, tracing how iron links human bodies to planet's core. It reflects on iron’s dual role as both a life-giver, essential to blood and breath, and a force of destruction, forged into weapons that disrupt various forms of beings.
8) Deluge, Meejin Hong, United States, 2024
Deluge is an ever-evolving landscape where the present inevitably coexists with the past. Memories are formed, reshaped, and obliterated, relentlessly competing for space. Control is surrendered, and mistakes and second chances are embraced. It is the slow stampede of a vulnerable mind.
9) Family Dinner, Margot Fabre, Canada, 2024
Inspired by the filmmaker’s family history of 'foie gras' making, the film is a surreal journey through the unsettling ways family traditions take root in our bodies and our lives.
10) Mirror, Anna Lytton, Germany 2016
To touch and be touched, to reveal and conceal. Pencil lines exploring skin, an inner world made visible on the body’s outer layer. Movements and gestures become manifestations of the relationship between the body and my drawings.
11) From the water, Diana Menestrey, Germany, 2021
A person wakes up. Due to a constant and symbolic metamorphosis, they gets the head of different animals. Through these metamorphoses, they is led intuitively to the search for a secret. This secret is generated in water and a fish is the only trace that can reveal to Them the consciousness of Their own origin. From the water shows the relationship between intuition and memory of living beings. In his search, the protagonist becomes half human, half animal. They is guided by animal instincts, but also by what They thinks They remembers.
12) Funga Goddess, Olga Michaluk, Poland, 2024
The titular ‘Funga Goddess is a shapeshifting deity with an incomprehensible power. The work dedicated to her consists of animations based on a series of hundreds of drawings and electronic music created from recordings of the artist's stomach sounds. The piece is an attempt to come to terms with individual powerlessness in the face of a global ecological catastrophe. It is a film about the end of the world that becomes a new beginning. Fungi consume the human structure of time, decomposing us after death and locking us forever in the cycle of matter. Through decay, they lead us to eternal life. The world is made of repetitions, and the cycle of matter is a form of return. We are enclosed in a process-yet only by stepping away from ourselves we can expand our perspective and realize that, as a species, we are merely part of a greater whole. Fungi base their life on diversity. We - humans - should learn from them and turn towards the idea of cooperation. Coexistence is the natural state of the rest of the world. Shifting the focus from the external and elevating spirituality to a pedestal is the only solution to the pressing problem of the ecological crisis. To save ourselves and the planet, we must literally turn ourselves inside out. Only fungi can save us from ourselves. In this work, they gain power, completely stripping humans of the right to control the world as a whole. They have been given the opportunity to fix our mistakes and start everything anew. Dealing with the future has its place in the past. So, let us begin again, with a revolution against the destructive civilization. Let us build a world based on sensitivity and imagination. The key to saving humanity lies in saving nature.
13) Granny's Treat, Gabriel Kryszpiniuk, Cyryl Ambroziak, Poland, 2025
‘Granny’s Treat’ is inspired by the TV series ‘How It’s Made’, where assembly lines and mass production take center stage. This is a nod to the repetitive actions and routines often associated with dependence on chemical substances. A variety of treats have been laid out on the table—can you guess which one is Granny’s creation? As a culinary specialist, much like a chemist in a lab, she meticulously crafts every recipe she undertakes. What’s her secret to success? It’s simple! Great fun and… excellent company! That’s why, during her chemical experiments, Granny is assisted by her faithful companion—a pig! Together, they explore how Granny’s signature treat takes her on a flavorful journey through the culture of spices. The intense taste sensations bring our heroine to a state of bliss. Granny deems her chemical experiment a success and thinks, Maybe it’s time to whip up another one. And you? What’s your take on Granny’s addictive treat?
14) Hootchu, Jung Hyun Kim, Republic of Korea, 2015
Allergies are irritating. It keeps everything from being done. There are many ways to solve it but none of them is ‘the’ solution. The stress builds up, and the tension grows. Eyes watery, head spinning, but then there is the perfect solution.
15) Hugs & Kisses, Marc Richter, Germany, 2025
A film about men. And hugs. And kisses. A new film by Marc Richter aka Neue Deutsche Kunst who's been working tirelessly on arcane new films since winning the MuVi-Award at renowned Shortfilmfestival Oberhausen, turning so-called artificial intelligence on its head.
16) Immature, Eddy Wu, Netherlands 2025
Immature is a colorful animated documentary that explores the fluidity and complexity of gender identity. The film delves into the evolving experiences of a transgender gay man, capturing the nuances of his self-exploration.
17) Impossible Maladies, Stefano Tambellini, Alice Tambellini, Italy, 2023
Aboard their cart, Doctor Rabarbaro and his assistant Tosse travel from house to house to cure absurd illnesses with their ingenious remedies.
18) Ordinary Life, Yoriko Mizushiri, France, Japan, 2025
Ordinary life repeats itself every day. The succession of moments that we repeat over and over again is never the same, and everything changes and wavers. The moment we touch something, our consciousness can go to a place that does not exist anywhere in the past, nor in the future. In an uncertain and fluctuating world, only the feeling of the body touching something, which exists only in this present reality, can be recognised as “now”. That moment is lovely.
19) Protozoa, Anita Kwiatkowska-Naqvi, Poland, 201
An animated impression of human nature – through the lens of a microscope, we observe a strange world that is, nonetheless, very similar to our own.
20) sweet sweat, Jung Hyun Kim, Estonia, 2018
A child recognizes the erotic relationship between the parents. Curious but overwhelmed, the child takes control.
21) The Waiting, Volker Schlecht, Germany, 2023
Karen Lips is researcher and lives for several years in a tiny little shack in Costa Rica to observe frogs. When she leaves the cloud forest for a short time and returns, the frogs are gone. All of them. Karen sets out to find them – and encounters a horrible truth.
22) This is not your Garden, Carlos Velandia, Angélica Restrepo, Colombia, 2025
Rooted in wetlands, páramos and centennial forests at the verge of disappearing, memories and a speculated future collide. 500 years of exploitation, exile and resilience are nourished by a collective pain and a desire to crack through it all.
23) Woman as Image, Man as Bearer of the Look, Carlos Velandia, Colombia, 2022
Faces, bodies and actions are juxtaposed endlessly. Fragmented pieces of the woman come together and form the volume of what has been her image in the history of cinema; one marked by the routinary domination and exploitation of her body. A short film homage to Laura Mulvey and her contributions to feminist film theory.
24) Holes, Birgitta Hosea, United Kingdom, 2024
A short, abstract, animated film that hints at an imaginary journey through a female body traced by oil pastels, milk, ink, detergent, lipstick and pomegranates using hand drawing, fingers, After Effects and a microscopic camera.
25) Kill Me, Aleksandra Trojanowska, Poland 2018
One's own death is undoubtedly the most intense experience. The death of the mind is more terrifying than the death of the body. A person turns into a mechanism sustaining vital functions until the “machine” jams. Death on a micro scale does not differ much from that on a macro scale. Death is death. Watching the denaturation of your own proteins, their breakdown, the uneven struggle with an intruder let in is something deeply moving.
You will see the films during the 18th IFFA Animator between June 5 and 13, 2025 in Poznan. Passes are available at the Muza Cinema and online.
