The 28th world festival of animated film, Animafest Zagreb 2018, will take place from 4 June to 9 June in Zagreb, Croatia. The festival is held to honor Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus for completing 200 years. This year will witness the event to follow the theme of horror while showcasing a selection of short and feature films, exhibitions, and open-air screenings. The feature program will comprise 400 films from 44 countries including trending titles from Japan, Korea, and the United States.
The arrangement of showcasing short films is in place with several programs lined-up back to back. One program will include featuring short classics from around the world and three programs will feature films made after 2000. Moreover, there will be a Croatian horror film program and three “Under the stars” programs at the popular Art Park. Two international exhibitions will complete this festival. Additionally, this year’s festival poster and trailer also unveiled work from Stipan Tadic, a Croatian artist in one of the exhibitions.
Disney’s short film The Skeleton Dance will open the short classics program at AnimaFest 2018. The festival will also screen various evergreen directors from horror genre: Tim Burton (Vincent), Piotr Dumała (A Nervous Life of Cosmos), Chris Landreth (Bingo), Raoul Servais (Harpya), Paul Berry (The Sandman) and Ruth Lingford (Death and the Mother). Street of Crocodiles, a feature film not depicting horror, will also be showcased to emphasize the large impact of this puppet-film horror.
Third segment named as “Dread in Your Head and Blood!” will comprise of films made over the last fifteen years. This section includes films by Rosto (Splintertime), Einar Baldvin (Baboon), Suzie Templeton (Dog), Jason Carpenter (The Renter), Rune Spaans (The Absence of Eddy Table), Robert Morgan (D Is for Deloused), Lora D’Addazio (Juliette) and Peter Cornwell (Ward 13), as well as the obligatory Japanese artists Takena Nagao (Chainsaw Maid) and Yusuke Sakamoto (The Night of the Naporitan). The fourth segment titled as “I Know What You Drew Last Summer” is a selection of this year’s releases made in the horror film category. The fifth program will have Croatian masterworks showcased under the name of Croatian Bestiary. It would feature works by authors such as legendary Vladimir Jutriša and Aleksandar Marks (The Fly), Pavao Štalter and Branko Ranitović (Mask of the Red Death) and Zlatko Bourek (The Cat), as well as still-prolific classic authors like Joško Marušić (Fisheye) and Zlatko Pavlinić (The House of the Plague), and the current frontrunners of Croatian animation, Marko Meštrović and Davor Međurečan (Silencium) and Simon Bogojević Narath (Leviathan).
The festival is concluded by two international exhibitions. Einar Baldvin (The Pride of Strathmoor) will present his drawings and graphic art under the name “The Crawling King”. Robert Morgan will showcase his macabre works under the name “Morgan’s Organs” at ULUPUH gallery.
Looking forward to see the response of the attendees and the outreach of 28th AnimaFest Zagreb 2018.