Ottawa International Animation Festival Announces 2019 Selection

2019 poster by Steve Angel

This year's Ottawa International Animation Festival is fast approaching, and this year's selections have now been announced. OIAF is North America's leading animation film festival and will run from September 23-25, in various venues in Ottawa, Canada.

The selections represent 36 countries, from nearly every continent, and feature animated features, shorts, student films, commissioned films and VR content.

"The diversity, range and levels of innovation and experimentation of this year’s Competition films is quite impressive,”"Chris Robinson, Artistic Director of the OIAF says. "Not surprisingly, there is an underlying tension and anxiety to many of the films. Animation artists are pondering the chaos of our time and where we fit into it all. I get this real sense of people being a bit lost and in exile from their lives as they struggle with personal identity, social media and the increasingly scary political slants around the planet. But it’s not all dark – you also see a lot of silly films about cats, masturbation, bondage, babies and twits. Artists continue to push themselves in terms of concept and technique."

The six features selected in competition are Away (Gintz Zilbalodis's feature), Studio 4°C's Children Of The Sea, Anca Damian's Marona' Fantastic Tale,  Our Sound, Tux and Fanny and  The Swallows of Kabul.

Looney Tunes Cartoon: Curse Of The Monkey Bird and Hey Duggee 'The Tooth Brushing Badge' are among the competing shorts. In animated series Big Mouth, Bee and Puppycat: Lazy In Space,  Robot Chicken, Welcome to Banoni City, Summer Camp Island and HBO Backstories: Barry have been selected.

The full selection consists of 89 short films, 21 Canadian Student films and 66 Canadian Panorama films. You can see the full line-up here.

Tickets start at $14 for the general public and $10 for children. For more information and to get your tickets, visit the festival website.

[source: OIAF]