"My Life As A Zucchinni", "Your Name" Lead New York International Children's Film Festival.

The New York International Children's Film Festival (NYICFF) returns this year with another animation-heavy line-up. Although the festival is not exclusively dedicated to animation, it still has reliably shown a mightily impressive range of animated movies, including many premieres. This year marks the 20th anniversary of the event and should be one to savour.

This year the festival will take place from February 24th to March 19th. The opening night will feature the East Coast premiere of My Life As A Zucchini (aka My Life As A Courgette), and well as the US premiere of the UK production Roald Dahl's Revolting Rhymes. February 25th will see the East-Coast premiere of Makoto Shinkai's smash hit Your Name, screening as "opening spotlight.



Getting its US premiere at the festival is Ancien And The Magic Tablet from director Kenji Kamiyama (best known as the director of Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex and Eden Of East). The film is described as "a fender and genre-bending film" about a high-school girl who has recurring dreams of warring machines that hint at long-dormant family secrets. The anime will screen as the closing night film. The film is known in Japanese as Hirune Hime or "napping princess".



Japan Academy nominated Rudolph The Black Cat will also get it's North American premiere, while Window Horses from Ann Marie Fleming will receive its New York debut. The festival also has several programs of shorts (both animated and live-action) and will also screen Isao Takahata's pre-Ghibli Panda Go Panda.

Tickets are now on sale for NYICF members and will be available to the general public on January 25th. To see more details visit the festival's website.