The International Animation Film Festival closed on Monday night with the award ceremony. The grand prize, accompanied by a monetary award, went to the British animation filmmaker Daisy Jacobs for her work titled „The Bigger Picture.” The Hiroshima Prize for the film that best expresses the Festival’s motto “Love and Peace” was awarded to Réka Bucsi’s piece titled Symphony No. 42. The prize is also associated with an outstanding professional acknowledgment and a monetary award. According to the international panel’s rationale, the work depicted a unique perspective which is novel and modern. Panel members included Joško Marušić, Inni Karine Melbey, Baerbel Neubauer, Joanna Priestley and Koji Yamamura, as well as animation director Ferenc Mikulás, the Managing Director of Kecskemétfilm Kft.
As the guest of honour at the five-day-long Festival, Hungary was present with three films in the competition program, and another 250 works with almost 1,600 minutes in total length, organized into numerous thematic programs. Additionally, during the Festival, an exhibition introducing Hungary and offering a selection of the works of a renowned Hungarian animation artist, Dóra Keresztes was also on display. The National Media and Infocommunications Authority, coordinating Hungary’s participation at the Festival, is simultaneously organizing thematic screenings in Hungary this week in cooperation with Uránia National Film Theatre and the public media to celebrate the one-hundred-year anniversary of Hungarian animation.

Award-winning films and creators:

• Grand Prize of the Festival (¥1,000,000 ): The bigger picture – Daisy Jacobs
• Hiroshima Prize (¥1,000,000): Symphony no. 42. – Réka Bucsi
• Renzo Kinoshita Prize (established to commemorate the husband of Festival Director Sayoko Kinoshita, deceased in 1996, who had also participated in organizing the Festivals) (¥300,000): Choir Tour – Edmund Janson, Latvia
• Audience Prize (¥100,000): No time for toes – Kari Pieskä, Finland
• Debut Prize (¥500,000): Boles – Spela Cadez, Slovenia/Germany

Special International Jury Prize:

• Lonely bones – Rosto, France
• Man on the chair – Dahee Jeong, France/Republic of Korea
• Baths – Tomek Ducki, Poland
• PIK PIK PIK – Dmitry Visotsky, Russia
• Phantom Limb – Alex Grigg, Australia/United Kingdom
• Non-euclidean geometry – Skirmanta Jakaite, Solveiga Masteikaite, Lithuania

Special Prize:

• Fugue for cello, trumpet and landscape – Jerzy Kucia, Poland
• 5 meters 80 – Nicolas Deveaux, France
• The Clockmakers – Renaud Hallée, Canada
• The Wound – Anna Budanova, Russia
• Astigmatismo – Nicolai Troshinsky, Spain
• The Beast – Vladimir Mavounia-Kouka, France