Germany’s biggest festival of animated film, the Stuttgart International Festival of Animated Film (ITFS), starts its 26th round: On tuesday evening, April 30 the festival was opened solemnly in the Innenstadtkinos in Stuttgart. During the opening ceremony both managing directors of the festival, Ulrich Wegenast and Dieter Krauß, were present as well as Evelyne Gebhardt, Vice-President of the European Parliament and Guido Wolf, Minister of Justice and European Affairs who came to congratulate.
A special highlight of the opening ceremony was the premiere of „Ode“, which was produced by filmmaker Shadi Adib and Studio Soi (Germany). They won the project competition “Animation film for Europe” with their concept for “Ode”, that was launched by the Film- und Medienfestival gGmbH with the kind support of the Ministry of Justice and European Affairs. The film promotes the European idea in the course of the European elections.
In addition, the first block of the International Competition was shown, which is the heart of the festival. Six films prove the limitless variety and different styles of animated film from all over the world, among them with “Animal Behaviour” an Osccar-nominee, a message of peace and hope for the Syrian people in “Four Acts for Syria” and a merciless billing with the great plagues of our times in “My Generation”. For the first time, there will be six instead of five short film programmes this year because of the high artistic quality of the submitted films.
For six days, one of the world`s biggest Animation festivals worldwide will present more than 1000 animated films at over 200 events. Some highlights besides the film programme at the cinmeas are the GameZone at Kunstgebäude with the latest computer games, a curated series about the connection of science, games and animation and the I/P/D-conference with talks and concerts about popculture and immersive media. In the thematic centre of this years festival is Europe with a curated film programme and hackathons which focus on the European idea and reality – for example the curated programme “Brexicuted” from British filmmaker Chris Shepherd.