POLISH ANIMATIONS AT OTTAWA FESTIVAL

The Ottawa International Animation Festival is slated to begin in just over a month. There will be plenty of Polish productions in both the competitive and non-competitive programme. New films by Marta Pajek and Grzegorz Koncewicz, for example, have a shot at winning awards.

Ottawa International Animation Festival (OIAF) is the oldest and most important event dedicated to animation in North America. The history of the Canadian festival began in 1976 with the first edition of the then biennial International Animation Festival. The festival has been extremely popular for years. This year, as many as 2528 titles from 104 countries were submitted to the OIAP, including 107 short films and 7 features selected for the competitions.

As in previous years, the program also includes Polish titles. The latest – and final – part of Marta Pajek's trilogy will enjoy its world premiere in the competitive section. “Impossible Figures and Other Stories I” takes place shortly after a huge explosion leaves only a few elderly people alive in a deserted city. The protagonist of the film, an old woman, walks its streets with great difficulty. She is surrounded by empty houses with geometrically divided planes, monuments reminiscent of old – and nowadays completely irrelevant – victories, and lifeless mannequins in store windows. The memories of those who are never going to return to the city appear in short flashes. The first part of Marta Pajek's triptych is a post-apocalyptic vision of the world in which man and his existence mean no more than a fraction of a second. 

Grzegorz Koncewicz will also compete for awards with his animation. “Not So Scary A Crocodile” has a chance to win the statuette in the competition for films intended for younger viewers.Its protagonists are a dog and a crocodile. They meet in a sewer and the crodocile decides to invite the dog home so he can wash up and eat before the dog's master returns. The crocodile tells him his story and learns that he isn't so scary and that he'd be better off living in a zoo than in the sewer.

Short animations aren't the only Polish films presented in front of the jury. David Stumpf's trailer for the Żubroffka festival has been invited to the competition section for commercial productions. 

In the non-competition sections, the audience will get to see “Crumbs of Life” by Katarzyna Miechowicz and “Green” by Karolina Kajetanowicz. 

This year's edition will be held online from 22 September to 3 October.

You can find more information about the event on its official website.