The international festival Hiroshima Animation Season 2024 will be held in Hiroshima, Japan for five days from 14 to 18 August 2024.
The first list of of jury members for “Short Films” and “Pan-Pacific and Asia Youth” to attend the festival includes: Joaquín Cociña (Chile, The Wolf House), Moon Sujin (Korea, Persona), Atsushi Wada (Japan, Bird in the Peninsula), Waltraud Grausgruber (Austria, Tricky Women/Tricky Realities), Liu Jian (China, Art College 1994), Chi-Sui Wang (Taiwan, TIAF), and Stéphane Aubier (Belgium, A Town Called Panic). More members will be announced soon.
The competition, the main program of the festival, will be held in four categories: Short Films, Feature Films, Pan-Pacific and Asia Youth and Japanese Commissioned Films.
Featuring the members of jury, the festival will hold programs such as retrospective screenings:
- First major retrospective in Japan of León & Cociña from The Wolf House, with the attendance of Joaquín Cociña.
- Featuring A Town Called Panic series with a talk by the co-director, Stéphane Aubier.
- Retrospective screenings of Liu Jian and Atsushi Wada.
- As the Festival Focus, special screenings from the Tricky Women/Tricky Realities curated by Waltraud Grausgruber and Taichung International Animation Festival (TIAF) curated by Chi-Sui Wang.
The main visual for the festival by animation artist Nata Metlukh (Ukraine/USA) has been unveiled.
The residency program of the Academy division in the festival Hiroshima Artist in Residence (H-AIR) confirmed the three invited artists from a total of 97 applicants, more than double the number of applicants from the previous festival. The three invited artists are Britt Raes (Belgium), Daniel Wesseik (Netherlands), and Moon Sujin (Korea). They will stay in Hiroshima for three months from June to work on their new project, hold workshops tailored to their respective creative styles, and engage in exchange activities with the city’s residents. Artist presentations of the results will be held during the festival.
The free entry period (Early Bird) for the competition has been extended until 24 March. Newly organised Hiroshima Animation Academy & Meeting (HAM) networking type program, a questionnaire survey is conducted now. HAM will be held at the same time with the festival as a new project. This is a networking program for professionals and students and provides a place and opportunity for encouraging participants to interact with each other.