The Spring Sea (Japan, 2025)
Director: Koji Yamamura
Genre: Experimental, Artistic
Technique: Paint on Paper
Synopsis:
A scene inspired by the Seto Inland Sea is depicted in the style of a sumi-e painting, set to a violin version of the koto piece “HARU NO UMI (The Spring Sea)” by Japanese koto player and composer Miyagi Michio in 1929.
Fly Train (Hong Kong, 2025)
Director: Ria Riwen Zhang
Genre: Experimental, Artistic
Technique: Stop-motion, Animated Objects, Shadow Play / Silhouette
Synopsis:
Fly Train uses shadow play and experimental visuals to explore time and memory. During an ordinary journey, thoughts drift between scenery and fragmented memories, caught in dreams. Everyday silhouettes transform into the surreal, diving into a poetic stream of consciousness.
ab mala usque ad ovo (Estonia, 2025)
Director: Nadiia Pliamko
Genre: Experimental, Surrealism, Tragicomedy, Tragedy, Drama, Love story, Fairy tale, Mystery, Philosophical, Music video, Music film
Technique: 3D, Paint on Paper, Live Action
Synopsis:
The animated film re-examines the Expulsion from Paradise from a first-person perspective. It portrays anxiety triggered by the collapse of an idyll, leading the Neurotic to confront self-rejection before finding a new form for an unwanted gift. Eastern tradition’s interpretation of the expulsion as a gift, allowing humanity to experience the full spectrum of life, is a key theme.
Advice for Being a Gentleman (Japan, 2025)
Director: Masakazu Hirano, Isami Takara
Genre: Comedy
Technique: 2D Computer
Synopsis:
An old gentleman delivers maxims to boys around the world. His seemingly humorous and savage philosophy hides sharp insight into human folly and grace. Inspired by his passion for truth, the boys refine their own judgment. His final lesson – “How to deal with boring people” – reveals the ultimate truth of becoming a true gentleman.
Wilderness maps / Karten der Wildnis (Germany, 2025)
Director: Aline Helmcke, Sandra Reyes, Juliane Franke, Franka Sachse, Catalina Giraldo, Ana Vallejo
Genre: Drama
Technique: 2D/Traditional, Stop-motion, Puppets, Cut-outs, Pixilation, Rotoscope
Synopsis:
A cartographer has lost his orientation: did his tools become useless or could it be that the terrain itself is changing? “Karten der Wildnis” is the story of the cartographer interpreted by seven animation artists who venture into the experiment of making a collaborative film. Analogue animation techniques and a poem by Daniela Danz are their starting points to approach the unknown, following the processes that occur when they enter into this adventure.
Creation (Hungary, 2025)
Director: Emily Ufken, Alexander Conrads
Genre: Experimental, Abstract, Artistic
Technique: 2D Computer
Synopsis:
The Hungarian word “alkotás” (artwork) has a dual meaning—it can refer both to the process of creation and to the finished artwork. The film tells the story of how a canvas comes alive, how playful, abstract forms are created, each carrying its own human narrative.
The In-The-Head Film (Germany, 2025)
Director: Konstantin von Sichart
Genre: Experimental
Technique: 2D/Traditional, Cell, Rotoscope, AI
Synopsis:
A rapidly associative animated film about life inside a neurodivergent mind: too many ideas, too little rest. It explores the inner noise of a filmmaker who wants everything at once – and almost breaks under it.
In the passage of history / در گذرگاه زمان (Iran, 2025)
Director: Maryam Khoeini
Genre: Experimental, Abstract, Surrealism, Artistic, Drama, Philosophical
Technique: Cell, Pencil on Paper
Synopsis:
This work, presented in a conceptual framework, explores the emergence, fall, and creation of humankind. From the very beginning of existence, the human being has traversed a path upon which every action and choice leaves an enduring trace throughout each stage of life. Every movement, every decision, and every deed not only reshapes the direction of this journey, but also carries the inherited weight of ancestral actions upon the shoulders of the present being.
This historical and existential burden does not remain confined to the individual; it reverberates through the entirety of the cosmos. The outer world and the inner world of the human become aligned and interconnected, so that any transformation within one is inevitably reflected in the other.
Tric Trac (Italy, 2025)
Director: Donato Sansone
Genre: Horror
Technique: 2D/Traditional
Synopsis:
“Tric Trac” is an onomatopoeic word used to describe a noise, a creaking sound that is the creaking of the world breaking apart.
At the center of this disaster is a man who has failed to educate himself to the awareness of this magic we are destroying.
inthebalance…wanting (United States, 2026)
Director: Eric Kunzendorf
Genre: Experimental, Abstract, Surrealism, Artistic
Technique: 2D Computer, 3D
Synopsis:
We say we weigh our choices, but how do we really? Our choices have consequences that define our future, but how can we have all the information we need to make choices when our lives are so limited. Time and death circumscribe the tapestry of our lives, yet we must choose despite such limits on our understanding. Relationships end with a word leaving us to wonder how our lives are buffeted in the resulting storm. Even not deciding is a decision where the tide of life sweeps our inactivity away. Or we act with the best of intentions in the belief that we’ve considered the pros and cons of our actions carefully only to find the consequences to be upheaval and destruction. Time and distance sometimes seem to provide a measure of clarity, but on closer examination they simply offer less ambiguity. As a group we are no different. A company terminates a small number of employees to save the larger number. We drop bombs killing hundreds of thousands to save millions more; and we develop weapons that keep the peace through the threat of their use. inthebalance…wanting asks “are we choosing ‘the good,’ or are we simply accepting the lesser of two evils?” It reminds us that rather than making virtue of such decisions, we should recognize the evil in those choices. Time has a way of finding them wanting in the balance.
Kaukokaipuu (Italy, 2026)
Director: Valentina Lo Duca
Genre: Artistic
Technique: 2D/Traditional, Rotoscope
Synopsis:
Inspired by the Finnish word “kaukokaipuu,” the film explores the nostalgia of the unlived — a longing for an elsewhere where past and possibility intertwine. Through an intimate and sensory journey, fragmented selves encounter one another in a space where absence, memory, and what never happened coexist.
Awakening (Russian Federation, 2025)
Director: Ivan Arkhipov
Genre: Experimental, Surrealism, Mystery, Philosophical
Technique: 2D/Traditional, Pencil on Paper
Synopsis:
At the beginning of a lifepath a man is overwhelmed with passions and carnal desires. He then becomes tired and calms down. Consiousness and creativity are awake. It is captivating.
The humanity had been asleep for a very long time. Now is the moment of life awakening and sensing ourselves as a part of something bigger, part of a whole. In this outcry uprises a power for new self-manifestation in our natural way.
Waiting for the Barbarians / En attendant les barbares / Περιμένοντας τους Βαρβάρους (France, Greece, 2026)
Director: Experimental, Artistic, Tragedy, Philosophical
Genre: Experimental, Surrealism, Artistic, Drama, Fantasy, Adventure, Biography, Philosophical
Technique: 2D/Traditional, Ink on Paper, Paint on Paper, Pencil on Paper, Rotoscope, “Blind” animation
Synopsis:
In a city—evoking, without specificity, a city of the Roman Empire—the poem depicts a state of waiting: the arrival of the “Barbarians” has been announced, the emperor himself seems ready to submit to their authority, and every hypothesis about the future is possible. The city holds its breath in anticipation… But who, exactly, are these “Barbarians”? And what if they do not come?
Dragon (Israel, 2025)
Director: Natalia Ryss
Genre: Experimental, Artistic, Black Humor, Drama, Documentary, Biography
Technique: 2D/Traditional, 2D Computer, Stop-motion, Ink on Paper, Paint on Paper, Pencil on Paper
Synopsis:
An inner journey through intense states of bodily and emotional reality — toward light and unconditional love.
Lullaby (France, 2025)
Director: Louis Fourel
Genre: Surrealism
Technique: 2D Computer, Pencil on Paper, Animated Objects
Synopsis:
Waken in the middle of the night by a giant rock in its bed sheet, a sleeper starts to wander in the maze he lives into.
Urban Hybrid / Ibrido Urbano (Italy, 2026)
Director: Francesco Gini
Genre: Artistic, Philosophical
Technique: 3D
Synopsis:
Is connecting with nature still a necessity, or have we forgotten how to heed its silent wisdom? Amid glowing screens and constant noise, nature remains a quiet mirror, revealing who we are beneath the surface. Perhaps now more than ever, returning to the rhythms of wind, water, and earth is not merely a desire but a fundamental need, a way to remember what it means to be truly alive.
Perspective (South Korea, 2026)
Director: Eunmi Kang
Genre: Abstract
Technique: 2D Computer
Synopsis:
Perspective is an abstract animated short set within shifting two-dimensional spaces built through perspective and changing eye levels. Abstract geometric forms move like characters, each defined by a distinct direction, rhythm, and way of moving. These movement patterns unfold through repetition and variation, echoing one another like melodic phrases in a song. Inspired by Paul Klee’s idea that “a line is a dot that went for a walk,” the film explores how meaning emerges through motion and perception.
These Weighted Stones / אבן מעמסה (Israel, 2025)
Director: Asa Rikin, Noga Sirota
Genre: Experimental, Documentary, Philosophical
Technique: Found Footage, 3D scan
Synopsis:
An anonymous traveler recounts his visits to three different cities: the spiritual Jerusalem, the material Jerusalem, and the virtual Jerusalem. Though he initially conjures a utopian vision of the city, the traveler discovers a reality more complex than what he had imagined, and ultimately finds sanctuary in a new and virtual version of Jerusalem – peaceful, and empty of its inhabitants.
