Two Irish short animations ‘A Coat Made Dark’ and ‘Geist’ have been selected for the Grand Competition in the 26th World Festival of Animated Film – Animafest Zagreb which will take place in June.
Animafest award-winners directly qualify for the European Cartoon d’Or Award and are also included in the Oscar run. This year’s Oscar winner ‘Bear Story’ won Animafest’s Audience Award last year.
Both ‘A Coat Made Dark’ and ‘Geist are also nominated at next month’s IFTA Film & Drama Awards – alongside ‘Tea with the Dead’ and ‘Unhinged’.
‘Geist’, which picked up the Best Irish Short accolade at the Audi Dublin International Film Festival last month follows a shipwrecked fisherman who takes shelter in an abandoned house on a remote island, but soon realises he is not alone. The film is a collaboration of Giant Animation’s three directors, Alex Sherwood, Ben Harper and Sean Mullen. It previously won the Best Animated Sequence in a Short Film award at the Galway Film Fleadh and screened at the SXSW Festival in the US earlier this month.
‘A Coat Made Dark’, directed and written by Jack O’Shea has also been selected for competition at Animafest Zagreb. In this film, two burglars strike it rich after stealing a mysterious coat. So begins a comic tale in which Midnight, an anthropomorphized dog and his human servant Peter struggle for power, courtesy of the coat. Produced by Damien Byrne for STILL Films, it features the voices of Hugh O’Connor, Declan Conlon and Antonia Campbell Hughes. The film previously screened at the Sundance and Clermont-Ferrand film festivals this year.
Both shorts were produced under the Irish Film Board Frameworks short film scheme, co-financed by the IFB, RTÉ and the Arts Council.
Animafest Zagreb will take place 6th - 11th June.
