OUR UNIFORM
Yegane Moghaddam, Iran, 2023, 7m, subtitled. 
"This uniform is more than just a piece of clothing. It is a text to be decoded. A manifest against women"  For many, clothing is a part of self-expression but how does wearing a uniform affect how one perceives oneself? An Iranian girl recalls school-age memories through the wrinkles and fabrics of her old uniform, quite literally. Rather than using paper, canvas, or a digital medium, in a return to 2D and stop-motion techniques Moghaddam painted directly on the cloth used for making hijabs to tell the story of a character who dreams of a better future.
Awarded the Diversity Prize at SPARK ANIMATION 2023; the Grand Prize at CINANIMA 2023 & Espinho City Award.

LETTER TO A PIG
Tal Kantor & Amit Gicelter, Israel/France, 2022, 17m, subtitled 
A Holocaust survivor reads a letter he wrote to the pig who saved his life. A young schoolgirl hears his testimony in class and afterwards has a twisted dream where she confronts questions of identity, collective trauma, and the extremes of human nature. Rendered in traditional rotoscope animation and live-action, Letter to a Pig is a metaphor for transferring hate into love and forgiveness, capturing how memory, reality, and the subconscious intertwine and influence each other.

PACHYDERME
Stéphanie Clément, France, 2022, 11m, subtitled
Every summer, Louise is entrusted to her grand-parents for a few days of vacation in the country. The green grass of the garden, the swimming in the lake, the fishing with Grandpa, everything seems as sweet as Grandma's strawberry pies. Yet this year, the snow will fall in summer and a monster will die – changing Louise forever.
Stunning visuals, framing technique, narrative twists and palpable tension paint the portrait of a young girl trapped in a traumatic situation. The symbolic, dreamlike aspects of the film makes it possible to deal with the memory of domestic abuse, although nothing is said explicitly but only suggested. As a child, you should be able to trust the adults in your life, but unfortunately this isn't always the case – exactly as we see in Pachyderme when a woman looks back at her childhood stays with her grandparents with a mix of nostalgia and anguish.

NINETY-FIVE SENSES
Jerusha & Jared Hess, USA, 2023, 13m 
An ode to the body's five senses delivered by a man with little time left to enjoy them.

WAR IS OVER
(Inspired by the Music of John & Yoko)
Dave Mullins, USA, 2023, 11m 
Set in WWI where a senseless war rages on, two soldiers on opposite sides of the conflict play a joyful game of chess. A heroic carrier pigeon delivers the soldiers' chess moves over the battlefield as the fighting escalates. Sixteen years into the highly controversial Vietnam War, The Beatles' John Lennon and his wife Yoko Ono released "Happy X-Mas (War Is Over)" as a protest. Fifty-two years later, the famed couple's son, Sean Ono Lennon, working from his parents' song, assembled a team of talented storytellers and animators to create an anti-war short film and plea for peace, as overseas wars like those in Gaza and Ukraine continue to produce unspeakable horrors against humanity. 

BONUS SHORTS
I'M HIP
John Musker, USA, 2023, 4m

WILD SUMMONS
Karni Arieli & Saul Freed, UK, 2023, 14m., narrated by Marianne Faithfull.