The first edition of Piccolo Festival Animazione was held 14 years ago. The festival is entirely devoted to animated films. The program includes both Italian and international productions.
The program of this year’s festival featured several Polish productions but it was Przemysław Świda’s Co-ognition and Julia Orlik’s I’m here that left Italy with special distinctions.
Orlik’s film tells the story an elderly man who is looking after his paralysed wife. Despite his old age and own health issues, he tries his best to alleviate her suffering, which is getting more severe every day. He is aided by his daughter, who tries to reconcile the care given to her mother with her own work at the hospital and her personal life. Each of them has different views on how the woman should be looked after, which leads to many arguments.
In turn, the protagonist of Świda’s animated film looks like member of the yuppie generation or a corporate employee. This time, however, there are no documents in his briefcase, but different versions of himself, and instead of going on a business trip, he sets out on a crazy run across his own consciousness. Is the man running away from himself or his he trying to catch up with himself? What will happen when his different “selves” finally meet? It’s an abstract vision of shaping your own personality told in a newspaper comic strip style. Visual experiments with black lines and pictures let successive frames intermingle, and the hero’s identity is built from geometric figures, irregularly shaped spots and distinctive objects.
A list of all winners can be found here.