Hiroshima Animation Season Announces H-AIR Artists, Jury, Deadline Extension

Plans are taking shape for for Hiroshima Animation Season 2024 – International Animation Festival (August 14-18), the second edition of the biennial event held in Hiroshima, Japan for five days.

The first batch of Jury members have been announced. Judging the Short Films and Pan-Pacific and Asia Youth competitions will be animation directors and festival pros Joaquín Cociña (Chile, The Wolf House), Moon Sujin (Korea, Persona), Atsushi Wada (Japan, Bird in the Peninsula), Waltraud Grausgruber (Austria, Tricky Women/Tricky Realities), Liu Jian (China, Art College 1994), Chi-Sui Wang (Taiwan, TIAF) and Stéphane Aubier (Belgium, A Town Called Panic). More jurors will be announced soon.

Members of the jury will also feature in this edition’s special programs, which will include retrospective screenings and talks. Highlights include:

• The first major retrospective in Japan for Cristóbal León & Joaquín Cociña, directors of The Wolf House, with Cociña in attendance.
• Spotlight on the A Town Called Panic series with a talk by the co-director, Stéphane Aubier.
• Retrospective screenings of works by Liu Jian and Atsushi Wada.
• Festival Focus special screenings from the Tricky Women/Tricky Realities festival, curated by Waltraud Grausgruber, and the Taichung International Animation Festival (TIAF), curated by Chi-Sui Wang.

Hiroshima Animation Season has also revealed the 2024 main visual, designed by Ukrainian-born American animation artist Nata Metlukh. A participant in the first Hiroshima Artist in Residence program, Metlukh uses digital hand-drawn techniques to create engaging visuals. Her design for the main festival visual is “sprinkled with motifs related to the participating jury and artists.”

Born in 1982 in Ukraine, Metlukh studied classical animation at Vancouver Film School and received a Master of Arts degree at the Estonian Academy of Arts, where she studied film direction under Priit Pärn. Her short films Regular‘ and awkward‘ have been awarded at several international film festivals.

On the subject of the Hiroshima Artist in Residence program, or H-AIR, the festival’s Academy division has announced the three artists chosen to participated in this edition. H-AIR 2024 received 97 applications, more than double the number as the inaugural residency.

The three invited artists are Britt Raes (Belgium), Daniel Wesseik (Netherlands) and Moon Sujin (Korea). They will stay in Hiroshima for three months starting in June to work on their new projects, hold workshops tailored to their respective creative styles and engage in exchange activities with Hiroshima citizens. Artist presentation of the results will be held during the festival.

Britt Raes (Belgium)

Belgian director, illustrator. Her short film Luce and the Rock went to over 200 festivals and won over 40 prizes, including honors from IndieLisboa, Berlinale and more.

In Hiroshima, she will work on the development of a TV series based on this short film.

Daniel Wesseik (Netherlands)

Visual artist, originally from Jerusalem, Israel. living in Amsterdam. His unique work is characterized by intersections and creations with various fields such as typography, animation and illustration.

He has been working on a series of paintings and animations using a typewriter, and in Hiroshima, he will be using Japanese typewriters for his production.

Moon Sujin (Korea)

Graduated from Korea National University of Art with a BA in Animation in 2022. Her first official film, and university graduation film, GAKJIL (Persona) received high acclaim at various international film festivals, including the Annecy International Animated Film Festival and the Cannes International Film Festival, and is expected to lead the next generation of filmmakers.

Moon’s next film, titled 36.5°C, aims to visually portray various emotions within the context of love, and explore the story of the joy of love and the painful feeling of loss with her rich expressive elements.

For filmmakers, the free entry period (Early Bird) for the film competition has been extended until March 24.

And newly organized for this year, Hiroshima Animation Academy & Meeting (HAM) will be held at the same time as the festival. This is a networking program for professionals and students and provides a place and opportunity for encouraging participants to interact with each other. During the three days of the festival, starting from breakfast time and concluding with parties after the screenings, exclusive Q&A sessions with VIP festival guests, seminars and more, HAM will provide a platform for the next generation of aspiring animators to pursue their career development, and offers industry professionals an opportunity to expand and deepen their knowledge base, as well as broaden their network of contacts.

As this is the first event, Hiroshima Animation Season is conducting a survey via questionnaire in order to create a fruitful program based on attendee opinions. (Find the questionnaire on festival homepage.)

Visit animation.hiroshimafest.org for more information, film submissions and to fill out the HAM survey.