Films for Children Competition

Paul Vollet was born 1996 in Düsseldorf and showed an early interest in animated movies. After absolving his Abitur in 2016 he moved to Hamburg to work for a Video Agency. Since 2017 he studied Animation at the Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg and graduated in the summer of 2023.

Antje Heyn is a Berlin based animation director and illustrator. Her work is inspired by daily observations of urban living and culture as well as nature and animals. Besides setting her heart on creating characters and bringing them to life she teaches animation at universities as well as art academies and is running the Protoplanet Studio.

From 1995 to 1996 Aleksey Pochivalov (1974, Moscow) studied animation and worked at the Soyuzmultfilm studio as inbetweener. From 1996 to 2005 he worked at the Moscow animation studios FAFinterinterinment, Object-Media, Center for National Film. In 1998 he graduated from the Moscow Art University ZNUI. From 2005 to the present, Aleksey is a director, artist and animator of the Moscow animation studio  Pilot founded by Alexander Tatarsky.

After studying applied arts at the Duperré school in Paris, Nicolas Bianco-Levrin publishes about twenty youth albums as an illustrator. At the same time, he co-directed about fourty animated short films with Julie Rembauville for which he designed the graphics.

Bram Algoed (1989) is an illustrator and comic book author from Brussels. He studied Animation at the School of Arts in Ghent and Cartoon at Sint-Lukas in Brussels, where he graduated with his first comic strip After Sunday it was Monday again. In 2020, he released his first graphic novel Assholes. in collaboration with American screenwriter Micah Stahl.

Erfan Parsapour is an accomplished art director and concept artist in animation, his directorial path was marked by his award-winning debut film The Incomplete (2019) acclaimed at prestigious festivals like Goteborg, RIFFA Academy, ALPINALE, and Busan Animation Festival. Venturing into live-action with Nowhere (2023), his latest 2D animated creation, The Alchemist Apprentice (2024), showcases his creative prowess.

Diego Alonso Sánchez de la Barquera Estrada is an animator and director born in Mexico City. He started his journey in the world of animation as a motion designer where he spent 12 years directing advertisements for TV. In 2018 he went to Gobelins (MA in character animation and animated filmmaking) with the dream of creating projects that resonate with the audience on a much more personal and emotional level.

Martin Smatana is a graduate of Animation at FAMU Film School in Prague, Czech Republic. His debut movie Rosso Papavero (2015) had  premiere at Berlinale 2015, was screened at more than 200 film festivals and received 15 international awards. The graduated  movie The Kite had its premiere at Berlinale 2019. The Kite was was included in the Film Collection of MoMA (Museum of Modern Art in New York).

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Veronika Zacharová is currently a graphic artist, illustrator and animator. She studied graphic design at Uherské Hradiště and Brno, than she moved to Animation department at the Tomas Bata University in Zlín. In Prague based animation studio Krutart she collaborated as an illustrator, animator and director on several award winning projects, such as stop motion commercial It Has Matcha! (2018).

With a professional career spanning more than 30 years, André Carrilho has received more than 100 honours and awards as an illustrator, cartoonist, animator, director and caricaturist. Dinner in Lisbon (2007) is the title of his first animated film. The Girl with the Occupied Eyes and Dear Sea are the names of his two best-selling children’s books.

Native of Nantes, Morgane Simon (1997) moved to Belgium in 2015 to study animation at the Haute École Albert Jacquard in Namur, before going on to complete a master's degree at the École nationale supérieure des arts visuels de La Cambre in Brussels. In September 2020, she joined the L'Enclume animation studio in Brussels to work on the feature film Yuku and the Himalayan Flower.

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Arnaud Demuynck (1966, Belgium) is a film director, producer and scriptwriter specialized in short and medium-length animated films. Since his L'Ecluse (The Lock), a short choreographic fiction film made in 2000, he has written and directed many animated films, including a choreographic trilogy made up of Signs of Life (2004), The Shadow of the Veil (2006) and Breakout (2007). With Under Blue Skies (2009), he started writing films for younger audiences. In 2022, he released his first animated feature film, Yuku and the Himalayan Flower, co-directed with Rémi Durin.

Daan Lucas (1997) is an animator and illustrator living in Utrecht, the Netherlands. His work is playful and bouncy, and works hand in hand with music and sounds. With a silly naivety, he approaches more serious topics that play a role in our world: ecology and climate change, human history and future, and mental health.

After graduating at the ESAAT, Celia Tisserant worked with Nicolas Liguori on his film The Wind in the Reeds. In 2018, she co-directed with Celia Tocco her first short film, The Golden Tortoise, and in 2019, her second short film, The Little Red Chick. She co-directed her first medium-length film with Arnaud Demuynck, Old Mother Snow in 2020.

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Arnaud Demuynck (1966, Belgium) is a film director, producer and scriptwriter specialized in short and medium-length animated films. Since his L'Ecluse (The Lock), a short choreographic fiction film made in 2000, he has written and directed many animated films, including a choreographic trilogy made up of Signs of Life (2004), The Shadow of the Veil (2006) and Breakout (2007). With Under Blue Skies (2009), he started writing films for younger audiences. In 2022, he released his first animated feature film, Yuku and the Himalayan Flower, co-directed with Rémi Durin.

Fabien Weibel is a Swiss scriptwriter, director and art director based in Luxembourg.  Immediately after his studies of 3D art direction and production, he launched into the world of animation as a director at Cube Creative in Paris, where he had the opportunity to write and co-direct a successful series based on the Angry Birds universe. In 2016, Fabien Weibel joined Zeilt Productions in Luxembourg to develop his Barababor series project as author, art director and scriptwriter.

Luciano A. Muñoz Sessarego is an animator currently living in Vancouver, Canada. He worked on variety of projects including advertising, games, shorts in big and small studios and as a freelancer too, teaching, training, giving talks. In the recent years has focused on character animation, working mainly in animated feature films. He also runs a small YouTube channel where he teaches blender to animators.

Masa Avramovic is an animation film director and illustrator born in 1994, in Belgrade, Serbia. She graduated from Faculty of Applied Arts (2017) and La Poudrière (2020). Her graduation film Stuck Together and Trails of the morning from the Fresh out of School collection, have travelled widely to festivals in Europe and the world. Her newest film Baking with Boris was made in the Young Audience Residency of Folimage.