Masters Competition 1.
01 Winter in March
Director(s)
Natalia Mirzoyan
Film info
Year of production: 2025
Country of production: Belgium, Estonia, France, Armenia
Production: Rebel frame
Length: 16' 22''
Category: Masters
Watch the trailerSynopsis
Helpless in the face of a repressive state, a young couple leaves their home — an escape that turns into a surreal nightmare.
02 Evacuations
Director(s)
Lilli Carré
Film info
Year of production: 2025
Country of production: United States of America
Production: n/a
Length: 07' 07''
Category: Masters
Synopsis
Painted formless figures haunt recent photos of emptied-out public spaces. As cel-animated smear frames, they perform various repetitive acts in these settings, with movements expressing the helpless, frantic energy felt in our current moment. Earth and organs are emptied, situations are fled. The figures become displaced from their locations, as their environments dissolve and their printed record evaporates.
03 Disturbia
Director(s)
Mira Yankova
Film info
Year of production: 2025
Country of production: Bulgaria
Production: Frame Productions
Length: 06' 23''
Category: Masters
Watch the trailerSynopsis
Before our very eyes a strange human-bird hybrid undergoes constant transformation to cope with the omnipresent tensions of economical, ideological, military, and climatic threats.
04 Adgwa-Ata
Director(s)
Zsuzsanna Kreif
Film info
Year of production: 2026
Country of production: France, Hungary
Production: BODDAH
Length: 14' 30''
Category: Masters
Watch the trailerSynopsis
Abducted into a jungle tribe’s brutal initiation, three adolescent girls enter a divine dimension—where taming their soul animals, giant snakes become the only path to adulthood .
05 Ultra Strong
Director(s)
Catherine Lepage
Film info
Year of production: 2026
Country of production: Canada
Production: National Film Board of Canada
Length: 09' 35''
Category: Masters
Synopsis
ENGLISH: Catherine tries to toughen herself to impress the “princes” in her circle, who turn out to be more off-putting than charming. When all her dubious strategies fail, she must face the ultimate test: learning how to embrace her true nature. ----- FRANÇAIS: Pour conquérir les princes de son entourage, plus voyous que charmants, Catherine tente de devenir une dure à cuire. Quand ses stratagèmes douteux échouent un à un, elle devra affronter l’ultime épreuve : assumer sa vraie nature.
06 Motherhood
Director(s)
Anca Damian
Film info
Year of production: 2026
Country of production: Romania
Production: Aparte
Length: 17' 41''
Category: Masters
Watch the trailerSynopsis
From the first rules imposed since birth to the turbulent tides of maternity, Motherhood traces one woman's intimate journey through memory, dream and surreal imagery. Drawing on her own life, the filmmaker deconstructs reality to reconstruct her inner world — questioning what it truly means to become a mother today, and what it costs to live. Through the poetry of animation, the film resists easy answers, offering instead images and sounds born from the deepest recesses of the imagination: raw, ambivalent, and entirely personal.
07 Trap
Director(s)
Dennis Tupicoff
Film info
Year of production: 2024
Country of production: Australia
Production: Jungle Pictures
Length: 03' 50''
Category: Masters
Synopsis
An experimental cartoon where the rectangular film Frame has no role at all. Each shot is its own Frame, played out all in black. TRAP is a story of murder and revenge, with its characters – man and mouse – caught in different traps, but always animated in black: a true film noir with no escape.