Honami Yano awarded the Grand Prize for animated short; Cesar Cabral awarded Grand Prize for animated feature as the 45th annual Ottawa International Animation Festival concludes.
The 45th Ottawa International Animation Festival (OIAF), North America leading animation festival, has announced its winners. Hosted online, this year’s festival received 2,528 entries from 38 different countries, from which 107 entries were selected for official competition.
The Grand Prize for Short Animation was awarded to Honekami (A Bite of Bone) (Honami Yano), an animated work reflecting on a young girl’s relationship with her father at his funeral.
OIAF 21’s Grand Prize for Feature Animation was awarded to Bob Spit - We Do Not Like People (Cesar Cabral). This film brought viewers into the head of cartoonist Angeli and into the post-apocalyptic world of Bob Spit.
The Public Prize was awarded to Night Bus (Joe Hsieh). Canadian stop-motion animation, The Shaman’s Apprentice (Zacharias Kunuk), was also a big winner, taking home the Canadian Film Institute (CFI) Award for Best Canadian Animation along with the prize for Best Narrative Short.
This year’s Competition Short Jury included Jodie Mack (United States), Anne Koizumi, the OIAF ‘20 winner for Best Narrative and Canadian Animation (Canada), and Kang Min Kim (United States), the OIAF ‘20 Grand Prize and Public Prize winner.
OIAF 21’s Competition Feature Jury included Winnipeg animator Mike Maryniuk, Nadja Andrasev (Hungary), and Polish animator Mariusz Wilczynski, who took home the Animated Feature Grand Prize at OIAF ‘20.
The Kids Jury was made up of children from across North America between the ages of 8-12. The winners of the Young Audiences Preschool and Ages 6-12 Competitions were selected through the Kids Jury’s careful consideration.
As per tradition, the OIAF ‘21 award statues were designed by Ottawa-based, scrap metal artist Tick Tock Tom. The statues are working phénakisticopes featuring an animation by New York artist George Griffin.
OIAF ‘21 continues online and in-person until October 3rd, 2021.
Full Competition Prize Winner List
Grand Prize for Short Animation
Winner: Honekami (A Bite of Bone) | Honami Yano | Japan
Jury Comment: This film was made on top of traditional techniques. But It has the power to lead us in a new direction. In an image composed of dots, we freely cross places and memories as if we are all small dots. After looking at the work, we can see why the director used these techniques. And it leaves a long lingering impression.
Grand Prize for Animated Feature
Winner: Bob Spit - We Do Not Like People | Cesar Cabral | Brazil
Special Mention: Elulu | Gabriel Verdugo Soto | Chile
Public Prize
Winner: Night Bus | Joe Hsieh | Taiwan
Canadian Film Institute (CFI) Award for Best Canadian Animation
Winner: The Shaman’s Apprentice | Zacharias Kunuk | Canada
Special Mention: Meneath: The Island of Hidden Ethics | Terril Calder | Canada
Vimeo Staff Pick Award
Winner: Un kilomètre à pied (Ten, Twenty, Thirty, Forty, Fifty Miles a Day) | Mathieu Georis | Belgium
Animated Short Competition - Category Prizes
Best Non-Narrative
Winner: Anxious Body | Yoriko Mizushiri | France and Japan
Jury Comment: Without visual texture, the film touches our bodies through its visceral fusion of the subconscious, unconscious, and conscious states of the mind and body.
Best Narrative
Winner: The Shaman’s Apprentice | Zacharias Kunuk | Canada
Jury Comment: The Shaman’s Apprentice is a masterful work of storytelling and the sharing of traditional Inuit knowledge utilizing impeccably detailed sets, costumes, props and puppets and told beautifully with precision and care. Using the Arctic landscape as a metaphor to the spiritual world, Zacharias Kunuk invites us to learn about Inuit shamanism and spirituality, a part of Inuit culture that was hidden for so long by colonialism. Like the Shaman, Kunuk transmits his knowledge and teachings through this film, and it is as if he is turning to us at the end and asking, “What have we learned?”
Bento Box Award for Best Student Animation
Winner: Space | Zhong Xian | United Kingdom
Jury Comment: Space moves us through the cyclical nature of falling in and out of love with swooping shots, original and playful transitions, a simple yet bold and expressive style, and shows us that love, like animation, can be a cycle that repeats itself.
Commissioned Animation
Winner: Johnny Flynn and Robert Macfarlane ‘Ten Degrees of Strange’ | Lynn Tomlinson | United States and United Kingdom
Animation for Young Audiences (Preschool) Competition
Winner: Bémol | Oana Lacroix | Switzerland
Special Mention 1: Konigiri-Kun Concert | Mari Miyazawa | Japan
Special Mention 2: S is for Spiders | Warren Brown | Canada
Special Mention 3: Ink | Erik Verkerk & Joost van den Bosch | The Netherlands
Animation for Young Audiences (Ages 6-12) Competition
Winner: T’as vendu mes rollers (You Sold My Rollerskates?) | Margaux Cazal, Jeanne Hammel, Louis Holmes, Sandy Lachkar, Agathe Leroux & Léa Rey--Mauzaize | France
Special Mention: Only a child | Simones Giampaolo | Switzerland
Animated Series Competition
Winner: One Day At A Time 'The Politics Episode' | M.R. Horhager & Phill Lewis | United States and Canada
Virtual Reality Competition
Winner: Strands of Mind | Adrian Meyer | Germany
Canadian Student Competition
Winner: Don't Think About Her | Liza Desya | Sheridan College
Special Mention 1: Fleeting: Here and There | Gilnaz Arzpeyma | Concordia University
Special Mention 2: The GOAT | Alexandra Ouchev | Dawson College
Animated Short Competition - Craft Awards
Best Script
All Those Sensations in My Belly | Marko Djeska | Croatia and Portugal
Best Design
Winner: Abandoned Village | Mariam Kapanadze | Georgia
Best Animation Technique
Winner: Steakhouse | Špela Čadež | Slovenia, Germany, and France
Best Sound Design
Winner: A Family That Steals Dogs | John C. Kelley | United States
Jury Comment: A Family that Steals Dogs uses sound to enhance an already visually compelling portrayal of the loneliness of grief and the consequential chaos in the mind. The comforting sounds of fire crackling and rain falling make us feel more isolated while the otherworldly tones are hauntingly soothing, reinforcing the tension between the protagonist’s conflicting thoughts and emotions as we become familiar with the unfamiliar and vice versa.
Source: OIAF 2021
