Animasyros, one of Europe’s major animation festivals, recently wrapped up its 19th consecutive year of celebrations in Ermoupoli, flying the flag for the Greece’s biggest International Animation Festival.
Beyond the seven competition sections (International, Student, K.ID.S, AnimaPride, National Competition, TV & Commissioned Films and Feature Films), this year’s edition included a special focus on Irish animation, a theme marking 200 years of Ermoupoli, educational workshops, parallel events, international collaborations and the Market, which has now become a key reference point for the entire industry in the Eastern Mediterranean.
Vassilis Karamitssanis, President of the Animasyros International Festival, spoke to Euronews about what the event has achieved so far and what lies ahead next year, when Animasyros celebrates its 20th anniversary:
“In the 18-19 years that Animasyros has been in the spotlight, or that have elapsed since its founding back in 2008, I believe it has become the most important hub for animation in the Mediterranean and in Greece. It places strong emphasis on showcasing Greek and European talent around the world and also aims to highlight new techniques and technologies in the field of animation, which I consider to be the key to a sustainable future for the audiovisual sector in general and for European animation in particular.”
Listen up
One of the most prominent guests at this year’s edition was the internationally recognised and multi-award-winning sound designerOlivier Calvert.
With a long track record of collaborations with leading directors and organisations, the Montreal-based Canadian creator has shaped the sonic universe of numerous acclaimed productions, including the Oscar-nominated short film The Girl Who Cried Pearls. He was also part of the Oscar-winning sound team for Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival.
During the festival, Calvert presented a masterclass devoted to sound as a decisive storytelling tool. The festival paid tribute to his work and screened a selection of films:
“Sound design shapes the overall sound of a film, which means you can work with its sonic environment. It can be realistic – birds, traffic noise, the sea, the waves. But it can also operate on a subconscious level. You can really create tension in a scene by adding other sounds beneath the music or the voice, or by removing sounds,” explained Calvert.
“You can build tension that way. It is important, because sound is the filter through which you look at the image. It gives you the emotion with which you perceive that image. There is a saying I like very much, which was also the subtitle of my workshop: ‘The image is the body, but sound is the soul’.”
“For me, it is the whole emotional landscape of the film. It is all the sound, not just the music. Every sound is music in a way, so it contributes to the emotional impact of the film. There is a big difference between fiction films and animation. In live-action films you first create sound for a normal environment. In animation everything is constructed, an entirely new world, so why should the sound be natural, real? In an animated film we do not need the sound to be realistic. So yes, we can create a completely different world, a unique world. A new universe to discover, both in terms of image and in terms of sound.
“Sometimes I get involved very early in the creative process, especially with directors I have already worked with. They now bring me in at a very early stage, because we can shape the film using sound as a storytelling device. You can tell a story purely with images and you can tell a story purely with sounds. So the challenge is to build a story through the collaboration between images and sounds. That is where I can help the director achieve this. I am something like an artistic director for sound,” added Calvert.
“I dare to take on the role of adviser for them. As soon as I am hired for a film, we start to discuss ideas around it. And we work together with the composer. I am not a composer. That is why I always collaborate with someone else on the sound, who is the composer. This trio (director, composer and sound designer) is very important. For me the soundtrack of a film is a whole. There is the music on the one hand and the sound effects on the other. Everything goes together, so it is a major collaboration between director, composer and sound designer. Yes, there is great synergy between the three.”
Cross-border collaborations
This year’s festival opened with the Greek premiere of Decorado by Goya-winning Spanish creator Alberto Vásquez (Unicorn Wars, Birdboy: The Forgotten Children), with the support of the Embassy of Spain in Greece and the Cervantes Institute. The film, which received the Paul Grimault award at this year’s Annecy animation festival, recalls The Truman Show in animated form.
It is an existential black comedy about the absurdity of modern life and the control that others seek to impose on us, featuring the director’s trademark macabre visual style, which combines innocence and dark humour with a dystopian contemporary reality.
José Luis Ágreda, the film’s creative director spoke to Euronews about the project: “Decorado, the film we presented here at Animasyros, is a parable, a dark parable about our society and the way in which each of us, every individual, feels within it. The film is also about how society or, more specifically, companies try to dehumanise people.
“The story is about a man without a job for whom everything seems strange. He does not perceive things as reality because they have nothing to do with him. There is humour and these funny animal characters,” said Ágreda_. “But when the viewer enters the world of the film, they realise that it is a dystopia, a universe that becomes ever darker. And they understand that it concerns them, as it reflects today’s world. This was our way of getting audiences to think about what is happening around us today.”_
“The animation style we use has many references to classic Disney cartoons. I mean classic American animation. But we give it a different twist, so that viewers do not immediately recognise it, while at the same time realising that there is something strange. It is as if we have a very happy world, like the society they try to sell us, but inside it there is something rotten. So we try to work with these characters and this kind of environment, yet we create odd colours, unusual combinations of colours. In the end, people feel: ‘OK, this is a nightmare, not a dream’.”
“What happens to the hero, Arnold, is very similar to what we experience on social media. You feel that you are at the centre of attention and of everything, but you are not. Everything around you is constructed, fake, not real. That is because we live in a society that stays with appearance and not with being. This is the idea behind our film: that we are on a stage, on a set, where we play a role while ignoring what is really happening around us. We do not realise that everything around us is fabricated. This gives us the impression that everything is perfect. The result? We do not deal with the great problems of our society.”
The Awards
The Grand Prize of the International Competition at the 19th Animasyros was awarded to Please by Anna Mantzaris, while the prize in the Greek Competition went to Konstantinos Demis for The Dog.
In the Student Competition, the award was won by Gauze, a film about Palestine created by a team of five students from GOBELINS Paris, Noran Fikri Alezabi, Nicholas Arujah, Xinyue Ma, Yulin YUE and Xiaonan Zhou.
In the Television and Commissioned Films category, the prize went to Saltwater by Eilidh Nicoll from the United Kingdom.
The Animapride competition section features films with LGBTQI+ content and showcases creativity, queer expression and acceptance. The jury awarded its prize to Eyeliner by Aisha Boujilouli. The first prize in the K.ID.S category was given to The Eagle and the Kinglet by Paul Jadoul from the Czech Republic.
The Audience Award at Animasyros was collected by Martin Lund’s Unstoppable, a subversive and emotional, humourous adventure film.