Animation Programme 2023

46th Drama International Short Film Festival

Just like last year, the international animation community has flocked to pay tribute to the Animation section of the new edition of Drama International Short Film Festival.

From a total of 190 films submitted from around the world and Greece, 17 have been selected for participation, distributed between two 90-minute screening programmes. It was a tough call. The film selection was based on qualitative criteria and animation principles, always bearing in mind how they factor in the narrative structure to enhance the film’s dramatic effect.

The selected entries are a case in point: they have been created with a variety of techniques and aesthetic trends spanning different categories, from fiction to experimental animation and documentary. The selection’s themes and conceptual quests are also refreshingly diverse. This edition’s animated shorts probe into human relationships, branching out into different parameters such as loneliness, third age, the exploration of sexuality etc, but also tackling humanity’s rapport to the environment.

Based on the above, we are confident that the animation programme will cater to the audience with an outstanding panorama of the art of animation as a film genre. Let open air cinema turn into a sea of moving images, as dreams sail in tune with emotions on an engaging journey.

Spiros Siakas

Pina Jérémy Depuydt, Giuseppe Accardo (Belgium)
Fuga Antonis Doussias (Greece)
Teacups Alec Green – Finbar Watson (Australia, Ireland)
Eleven Vuk Jevremovic (Croatia, Germany)
Homemaker Ciara Kerr (UK)
Scratch Jakub Krzyszpin (Poland)
Kafka’s collection of porn Aristotelis Maragkos (Greece)
Her dress for the final Martina Mestrovic (Croatia)
Almost forgotten Dimitri Mihajlovic, Miguel Lima (Portugal)
Box cutters Naomi Van Niekerk (France, Netherlands, South Africa)
Trace Asparuh Petrov (Bulgaria)
Claw machine Georges Salameh (Greece)
The tornado outside Maria Tomazou (Greece)
The legend of Goldhorn Lea Vucko (Slovenia)
The murder of Olof Palme Joaquim Weibull, Paco Garcia (Sweden)
Greylands Charlotte Waltert, Alvaro Schoeck (Switzerland)
The island of us Yu Yu (Taiwan)

The posters of the films of the Animation program 2023

The Animation Program Jury

Alecos Papadatos

Jutta Wille

Anthi Samartzidou

Alecos Papadatos (President)

Alecos Papadatos was born in Thessaloniki, Greece. He studied Economics at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and then Philosophy at Sorbonne University. However, his passion for sketching and drawing turned out to be much too important to him and he decided to pursue it professionally. At first, he chose animation and studied in France with Stéphane Bernasconi and later with Patrick Cohen. He worked as an animator on the Ellipse Animation series, Babar, a CanalPlus co-production with Nelvana in Toronto. In the 90’s, he returned with his partner and colleague Annie Di Donna to Greece, where they set up an animation studio, Spicy Toons, which trained and then employed approximately twenty young Greek and European animators. They worked mainly on French series and advertising projects. The studio ran its course in the late 90’s. Later, in 2003, Alecos went back to comics and worked on the graphic novels Logicomix, Democracy and Aristotle, in collaboration with a variety of brilliant writers and publishers. During this time, he also did storyboards for several French series and commercials, as well as a considerable number of illustrations for a multitude of magazines and books. Today, in 2023, he has two comics in the works while also working to set up a training programme on Animation Storyboarding for young people in Greece, designed to help young professionals promote their projects and spread their wings abroad.

Jutta Wille

Jutta Wille studied History and Physics at the Academy of Pedagogy, Dresden, and Business Studies at the University of Applied Sciences in Berlin. She has been working for various film productions, among other things as location and production manager. For ten years, since 2003, she was project coordinator for the AG Kurzfilm — German Short Film Association, now its managing director since 2013. She has headed various other projects, including the Catalogue for German Short Films and the preparation and running of AG Kurzfilm’s presence at film markets in Clermont-Ferrand and Annecy. She has also served as a member of several festival juries and selection committees. Since 2002 she has also been working for the International Short Film Festival, Dresden.

Anthi Samartzidou

Anthi Samartzidou was born in Drama in 1972. She studied at the School of Early Childhood Education of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, and completed her piano and harmony education at Alexandrio Conservatory of Thessaloniki. She studied comics and screenplay at a private college. Her dissertation was on the illustration of children’s books. In 1999, Drama’s Municipal Enterprise for Social, Cultural and Tourism Development published the “Satyrikon Drama” comic book, drawing on the history of the city, which she wrote and illustrated. She has taken part in solo and group illustration exhibitions in Greece and internationally. In 2000, she collaborated with Hamburg Short Film Festival as cartoonist. In 2002, she received a scholarship from the International Youth Library, Munich, to carry out a project on children’s books. In 2013, she graduated from the Open University in the United Kingdom with a Master’s degree in Education. She has presented her work at multiple international conferences on education. Since 2020, she has been part of the Drama Comics Festival where she hosts creative writing and illustration workshops for children. Since 1993, she has been collaborating with publishing houses as illustrator and writer of children’s books (Kirki, Syghronoi Orizontes, Ellinika Grammata, IWrite-Pigi publications). Since 2001, she has been working as a preschool teacher and musician in public schools.