Short Film Competition 1

Animated film director, graphic artist, and art teacher. He finished his studies at the Hungarian University of Arts and Design in 1994, at the faculty of animation and video. During his career, Tamás made independent, experimental animation shorts, posters, illustrations.

Since 1995, he teaches animation and creative visual thinking.

He is founder and director of Budaörs Animation and Creative Space – BABtér, which is a wonderful graphic design studio that offers risograph printing services.

Kaspar Jancis, born on the 8th of May 1975 in Tallinn, is a renowned Estonian animation director, scenographer, musician, and composer. Kaspar studied filmmaking at Tallinn University and Turku Arts and Media School. Since 1999, his films have been screened at top animation festivals internationally. His films are known for their distinctive hand-drawn animation style, blending meticulous visual detail with minimalistic dialogue and absurd humor in exploration of human relationships.

Will Anderson is a BAFTA-winning filmmaker and animator from Scotland. Based in Edinburgh, he creates character-led, dialogue-driven animated work for film, TV, theatre and online, often shaped by a process-focused approach and an interest in existential themes.

Alongside his own films, he also creates work for clients and collaborators including OK Go, BBC, BFI, MTV, [adult swim] and Warner Bros. Discovery.

Lucas Zanotto is an Italian designer and artist celebrated for his joyful and imaginative creations. Based in Helsinki, he blends his product design roots with playful artistry to craft animations and installations that captivate audiences worldwide. His work inspires wonder and delight, connecting with viewers of all ages.

Maria Zilli was born in Rome in 1998. She graduated from the course of New Technologies of Art at the Academy of Fine Arts of Urbino in 2021. She is keen on both moving and static images that convey the absurdity of everyday life. She graduated from ISIA Urbino in 2025, after completing an Erasmus program in Animation Cinema at ENSAD in Paris.

Honami YANO is a Japanese animation filmmaker born on a small island in Japan. Her short film A Bite of Bone (2021) won the Grand Prize for Short Animation at the 45th Ottawa International Animation Festival. Alongside her filmmaking practice, she researches sexuality and gender in animation and curates screenings dedicated to queer animation.

Kyle Brooks is an animator and filmmaker living in Los Angeles. He specializes in 2D animation direction, blending naturalistic character acting with absurdist situational comedy.

Past clients include FX, Titmouse, Bento Box, Green Street Pictures, Adult Swim, and Paramount+.

Zak Margolis is an artist and animator based in Portland, Oregon. Much of his animation explores the relationship between image and music and how each illuminates the other. He has collaborated with various musical artists including Unwound, Tara Jane O’neil, Charlie Campbell, Alicia Jo Rabins, the Oregon Symphony, 45th Parallel Universe, Nancy Ives, House of Scordatura, and Vern Avola (Trigger Object). Besides his own work, Margolis has worked extensively with animation luminaries Jim Blashfield and Rose Bond. With Jim he worked on creating animation and designs for numerous public video sculptures that offer abstracted clues about the history and culture of their surrounding landscapes. With Rose he has built animated environments of other worlds that form projections onto the windows of buildings, on the walls of concert halls, and in planetarium domes. He also teaches animation at Pacific NW College of Art.

I’ve been doing the animation boogaloo since 2014, progressed from weird musicvideo’s inti mixed media animation, made the animated three part animated documentary Bad Bad Belgium miniseries in 2024. Currently contemplating an animated horror short.

Started out as a graphic designer in 2014, teamed up with a dorky animator in 2016 to become Visuals Internationals, a beautiful animation company in Belgium. co-directed the animated socu series Bad Bad Belgium in 2024, currently developing an animated science show for kids

Montreal-based graphic artist and animator of Abenaki descent Diane Obomsawin brings wry humour and engaging visual economy to her short films. I Like Girls, the film adaptation of her graphic novel about sexual identity, has screened at more than 40 international festivals, winning top honours at the Ottawa International Animation Festival. Her most recent animated short, I Don’t Love You Anymore (2026), is her eighth collaboration with the National Film Board of Canada. Obomsawin publishes graphic novels under the pseudonym Obom.

Battaglia has been involved in animation since 1980 and has been in Ottawa competition on six occasions. He is Professor Emeritus at Rochester Institute of Technology, NY.

Dante Zaballa is a frame-by-frame animator and illustrator from Argentina, who likes generating a colorful and psychedelic universe by experimenting with diverse techniques. His work combines seemingly messy hand-drawn lines, raw shapes and flickering textures.

Anna Mantzaris is a director and stop-motion filmmaker whose work blends awkwardness, dark humour and the quiet absurdity of the human condition. She is drawn to characters who don’t quite hold it together—strange, yet relatable. Her work has won more than 100 international awards, including an Emmy, an Annie and a European Animation Award.

Anna holds an MA in Animation from the Royal College of Art, London, and has worked as an animator on projects including Wes Anderson’s Isle of Dogs. In addition to making films, she has lectured at institutions such as the Royal College of Art (UK), Konstfack (SE), the National Film School of Denmark (DK) and the National Film and Television School (UK).