Fest Anča International Animation Festival will release a selection of films one week after the festival at DAFilms.com. From the comfort of their homes, viewers can look forward to six collections of animated shorts that reflect this year’s festival theme—Women in Animation. All films will be available (mostly) worldwide between July 4 and 10, 2022. 

Women in Animation

Through the lens of this year’s theme, DAFilms will introduce viewers to the world as perceived by women. Jakub Spevák, programme dramaturge of Fest Anča and curator of this year’s Focus, says: “Even though we would like to believe that the world we live in today is different, we as a society still have to fight against prejudice, and gender (in)equality remains a major topic. That is also why we’re highlighting women (not only) in animation, both as authors and heroines, and are looking at the world through their eyes.” He adds that women’s perspectives explored during the festival are those that corrode the binary systems and aim for a more fluid state of things. These perspectives incorporate the yearning for a world where women, men, and all others are equal.

The collections of short films will offer a platform for exploring feminism, patriarchy, and gender, as well as motherhood, physicality, and folklore. Screenings of films such as My Body Belongs to Me, Somewhere in the Middle, and Burn, Witch, Burn! include opportunities to watch pre-recorded interviews with figures such as ethnologist Katarína Nádaská, drag queen Cherry Tree Wood, and burlesque performer Lotta Love. 

Films included in this Focus will have English and Slovak subtitles.

Admission

Viewers can access the film collections online at DAFilms.com. The full Women in Animation programme will be available as a purchasable collection for EUR 5. Virtual tickets can be bought at DAFilms.com by credit card or PayPal. 

About DAFilms

Fest Anča International Animation Festival is the only Slovak multimedia festival focused on animation, primarily for adult viewers and this year, the festival is cooperating on its online programme with the DAFilms streaming platform. The online portal DAFilms.com is the main project of the Doc Alliance festival network formed by 7 key European documentary film festivals. It represents an international online distribution platform for documentary, art house and experimental films focused on European cinema. It offers over 1900 films accessible across the globe for streaming or legal download. The films are included in the virtual database on the basis of demanding selection criteria. 

Fest Anča International Animation Festival 2022 is financially supported by the Slovak Audiovisual Fund and LITA Fund. The event was supported from public funds by the Slovak Arts Council. Women in Animation, Fest Anča’s 2022 thematic focus, is an implementation of the Student Forum Fest Anča. 

The Student Forum Fest Anča benefits from a EUR 120,609 grant from Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway through EEA Grants. The project has received co-financing from the State Budget of the Slovak Republic of EUR 18,091. The aim of the project is to work with attendees, promote international mobility and cooperation between European schools, share knowledge and skills, and compare animation teaching methods across Europe.