SET 3: WAITING ROOM

For Hugo, visiting the forbidden area of Chernobyl is not a commemorative trip. If this young tourist wanders through radioactive ruins, it is mainly to feed his Instagram account. This absurd quest will lead him to discover the history that haunts The Zone... 

Born in 1965 in Saint-Brieuc, France, Bruno Collet got his Art Degree from The Fine Arts of Rennes in 1990. From 1993, he worked as a set designer on numerous productions in stop-motion before starting, in 2001, his career as an author-director. He was nominated to the Oscars in 2020 with his film Memorable.  

Ten-year-old Lou waits in the emergency room. Usually, by this time, she and her little sister have already eaten. Lou could really use a snack to forget the memories of the afternoon at the pool that keep unsettling her. 

Rose Denis is a writer and director. She studied Romance languages and literature, scenography and criminology and worked as an actress for about ten years. She is the author of a collection of short stories (“Encounters with my shadow” self-published in 2014), a play (“Murders at Cripple Creek”, which received a P’tit Molière in 2012) and a photo exhibition (“House of souls”), among others. She has also trained as a director, and has written several feature and short films, made a music video and short fiction films. In 2024, she directed her first animated short film, “The Little Girl with the Apple”, supported by the MiCROFiLM call for projects from the Camera-etc studio. She is currently working on several projects in parallel: a short and a feature film, a series, a youth album, and a documentary. 

“35 Days” is an experimental, stop motion animation about what happens when a coalition of strangers answers the call to locate a missing cat during the pandemic lockdown of 2020. Created frame-by-frame using fabric cutouts and thread.  

Heidi Kumao is an award-winning visual artist who creates animations, stitched fabric works, video installations, photographs, and machine art to give physical form to the emotions underlying everyday conversations and relationships. She has exhibited her artwork in solo and group exhibitions nationally and internationally and has been awarded fellowships and grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, Creative Capital Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. Her film, “Swallowed Whole,” about breaking her back, screened in over 25 film international film festivals and was awarded “Best Experimental Film” at the Seoul International Extremely Short Film Festival, and Humboldt International Film Festival. The publication, “Heidi Kumao: Real and Imagined” (2022), documents her solo exhibition of narrative fabric works and animations and received a Gold Award from the Midwest Book Awards. 

Noticing her husband Ivar's new scent, Anne lies awake at night with a nagging question: should she leave him? 

Markus Tangre is a director and puppeteer based in Oslo, Norway. His creative, dark-comedy style and meticulous attention to detail shines through in every aspect of his work, from Röyksopp music video speed_k1ng to his debut short film Ivar. 

An immigrant woman examines her past in the wake of her American ex-boyfriend’s death. The film explores how love and loss impact the ways she confronts her identity, memories, insecurities, and regrets. 

I am an artist based in Brooklyn, New York. I have been working and teaching in the independent animation field since 2011. I received a BFA in Painting and BS in Film Production from Boston University. I then moved to New York City and started my career as an editor on Signe Baumane's feature film “Rocks In My Pockets”. From 2013 to 2018, I worked as the senior producer at indie director Bill Plympton's studio. Since 2016, I have been teaching animation production, storyboarding, and motion graphics at various CUNY campuses. I went back to school and completed my MFA at Hunter College's Integrated Media Arts program in 2025. “A Grieving Heart” is my MFA thesis film. My first animated short “Pangs” premiered at Slamdance Film Festival in 2016. In 2020, my animated short “My First Sessions” was published by The New Yorker Documentary. I have directed three music videos for Verve Label Group and Decca Records, including “Cheek to Cheek” by Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong, and “Hope is the Thing with Feathers” by Christopher Tin. I am a two-time recipient of the National Board of Review student grant, and a 2023 winner of the Princess Grace Award in Film and Animation. 

As world tragedies pile up, a bored couple is looking for their next distraction. This explosive dark comedy is a blunt take on the privilege of boredom and the dissonance that is needed to pretend everything is okay. Lebanese-Canadian illustrator and animator Bahij Jaroudi compels us to recognize our own apathy in this relatable black-and-white animated short. 

Born in 1981 in Lebanon and recently relocated to Toronto, this award-winning illustrator and animation filmmaker has collaborated with major clients like Netflix, Cartoon Network Arabia and The New York Times. After earning an MA in Animation from Kingston University (UK), he built a prolific career spanning animated ads, short films and children’s books, and has taught animation at the Lebanese American University. He spends his time deriving pleasure from the act of drawing and hopes to do so for the rest of his life. 

Jaya sets out to hunt the spirit of the mountain, a sacred beast with valuable feathers. As she approaches the heart of the mountain, she’s interrupted by her younger sister, Amala, devout on protecting the spirit. 

Luke Ashworth, Yehor Bondarenko, Alp Kurdoğlu, Romane Talva and Ange Yajima graduated from Gobelins in 2025.  

Tears of the Mountain is a multicultural team with varied tastes and sensitivities who gathered around a project that would blend their interests and influences: dramatic narratives, nature, history, culture, and dinosaurs. 

Since the first year of the masters program, we forged our bond through tea and biscuits by hosting a ritual of afternoon tea breaks every day. A mountain was climbed together whilst having fun and trusting one another. 

A short animated documentary about Alicja and Bożena Wahl - twin sisters and visual artists active in the second half of the 20th century. The film is based on fragments of Alicja’s diaries and the works of both artists. It is a story about sisterhood, shared artistic creation, and a relationship that became the center of their private and artistic lives. Alicja’s diaries, which form an intimate and ongoing dialogue with Bożena, open a window into the sisters’ world - one filled with both closeness and with tension.

Helena Stańczyk – animation director and comic book author. A graduate of the State Secondary School of Fine Arts (PLSP) in Warsaw and a final-year student of Animation and Special Effects at the Łódź Film School. Her short animated documentary “49 385” has been screened and awarded both in Poland and abroad. Her debut comic “Ni pies, ni wydra” was included among the 150 best children’s books at the Bologna Book Fair in 2025. She is the great-granddaughter of Alicja Wahl.

Hind Rajab and her family were murdered by the Israeli Occupation Forces on the 29th of January 2024. The UK is directly participating in the Israeli Genocide of Palestinians.