Merlin Flügel (b. 1987, Germany) is an independent director and animator based in Berlin. His animated short films have gained international recognition at major film festivals like Berlinale, Go Short, Pictoplasa and Animateka. His graduation film Rules of Play won the Best Experimental Animation award at CutOut Fest in Mexico, as well as the Jury Award in Annecy (2019). He occasionally teaches and gives workshops, for example at Hochschule Düsseldorf (2023) and Nanjing University of the Arts (2019). Flügel directed several film festival trailers such as for Interfilm (2020) and ITFS (2023) and was a jury member at Dok Leipzig in 2024.