Once upon a time… life? It is still around - and keeps on thrumming in each of us.

The 18th edition of the Animator International Animated Film Festival will take place in Poznań on July 5-13, 2025. This year's theme: ROTAMINA – THE CHEMISTRY IN US invites us to the laboratory, where, using the powers of animation, we will analyze the complexity and mysteries of the human body. Creators and filmmakers from around the world are invited to submit original animated films, as well as audiovisual experiments, tackling the theme of the upcoming edition of the Festival.

The slogan ROTAMINA – THE CHEMISTRY IN US refers to iconic works, such as the short “The Marvellous Bubbles In the Throbbing Lymphocytes” (1973) by Julian Antonisz and the 1980s TV series “Once pon a time… Life ” by Albert Barillé (1986-87). The call seeks submissions of audiovisual works on preparations, concoctions, reagents - images of what constitutes the building blocks of our bodies and makes up the chemistry within us. We want to explore what permeates us, surrounds us, drives us. We are interested in the topics of chemical solutions, organisms, biology at the cellular level. We want to think about the ingredients we put into our bodies, seeing them as remedies for some or all of our problems, and the substances we deliberately choose to avoid.

In 2025 Animator symbolically comes of age. Entering adulthood is linked to responsibility for one's own health and a conscious choice to take care of one's own well-being. ROTAMINA – THE CHEMISTRY IN US is more than just a tagline - it is an invitation to reflect on processes at the cellular level that translate into social issues in a global perspective. From a Petri dish of specimens to the global opioid epidemic, from fine particles of substances to physical addictions - that's where ROTAMINA takes us.

Recently we explored the distant perspectives of artificial intuition, now we turn our attention to what is closest to us - our own bodies and the internal processes that animation can creatively make visible. We extend an invitation to artists to take a journey inward and explore the phenomena that happen within us - from chemical compounds to biological changes.

For ROTAMINA – THE CHEMISTRY IN US open call, you can submit animated films created in any technique: experiments, video collages, works created with the help of AI, fragments of larger installations or entire works. What counts is originality and creativity in interpreting the theme. Let's explore together what secrets our body holds - and how we can discover them through animation. Let's look at ourselves through a microscope!