From 21 to 25 October, Fredrikstad Animation Festival (FAF) offers 113 films in its program, 67 official guests and a total of 28 seminars, panel discussions and workshops.
New this year is a dedicated market for animated film called Animated Network Days (AND Market). Running from 21 to 23 October, it features a dedicated industry program that brings together professional filmmakers, producers, distributors, sales agents and financiers from across the Nordics and the Baltics, as well as the wider international animation community. AND Market: see a preview of the full Animated Network Days in a separate article.
FAF will continue to put a strong focus on the creativity the animation medium generates, with films, masterclasses and conversations with filmmakers. This year FAF's "Animated Live" concept returns to the program, and for the first time there will be karaoke on Friday evening.
Highlights
FAF Masterclass: Anna Mantzaris and Brice Chevillard
Two masterclasses are presented on Saturday 24 October, with a particular focus on the creative development of animated film. First up is the Swedish stop-motion animator and award-winning director Anna Mantzaris, who throughout her career has created unique puppet films, both as creative short films and as commissioned work. The second masterclass focuses on the production of the new French queer animated feature Jim Queen, with screenwriter Brice Chevillard. There will be a screening of Jim Queen after the seminar.
Gaming Masterclass: Nathan Jurevicius and Aslak Helgesen
In collaboration with the local game developers at Leik Games and HeyYo, FAF has a special focus on game development and animation in digital games. We look forward to putting greater emphasis on this with a masterclass featuring two well-established game developers.
On Friday 23 October, the Annie Award-nominated game animator Aslak Helgesen talks about the development of Teslagrad, which uses traditional animation techniques so that players get to experience being the puppeteer themselves. Canadian/Australian Nathan Jurevicius, comes to present the development of the Scarygirl IP across various gaming experiences and on different platforms.
Queer focus
When the programme committees was putting together this year's program, they saw that a number of animation makers are engaged with queer themes or with portraying queer characters. Many of the films in this theme were very high quality. It therefore felt natural to include several films with a queer focus in the program, ranging from films in the competition programs to a dedicated panorama program.
This gives the festival program a broader diversity perspective, complementing it with films about identity, the struggle for freedom, inclusion and liberating sexuality. And of course love – because it really is that simple: love is love!