Mar 21, 2016

"Cafard", "Before Love" Top Holland Animation Film Festival

The 19th edition of the Holland Animation Film Festival wrapped up yesterday in Utrecht, Netherlands.

Veteran director Igor Kovalyov, who has directed many well known shorts (Bird in a Window, Milch) alongside mainstream industry projects, like The Rugrats Movie, took home the narrative short film grand prize for his latest film, Before Love, which had its world premiere at Holland. The short jury, comprised of Dave Cooper, Bernard Granger, and Tatsutoshi Nomura, called the film a “masterwork,” describing it as “a lush feast of undulating light and textures that tells a mouthwatering ambiguous story. It offers as many questions as it does answers.”

Holland is unique in that the festival also gives a grand prize for non-narrative shorts, which are often overlooked when it comes to awards at other festivals. The festival's non-narrative prize was awarded to Track by Tochka and Kazue Monno.

The World War I drama Cafard, a Dutch/French co-production directed by Jan Bultheel (pictured, top), won the feature film grand prize. Cafard's graphic look was achieved with motion capture, coupled with low-poly models and simple textures. Holland's feature jury was comprised of Hans Heesen, Stuart Pound, and Gints Zilbalodis.

A complete list of Holland's winners is below:

Winner Grand Prix short narrative

Winner Grand Prix short non-narrative

Winner Grand Prix feature film

Winner Grand Prix student film

Winner Grand Prix Dutch animation

HAFF Audience Award Dutch animation

MovieZone HAFF Award (in cooperation with EYE)

HAFF Junior Audience Award (in cooperation with EYE)

Winner web competition HAFFTube