"MAGIC MOUNTAIN" AWARDED AT ANIMAFEST ZAGREB!
Today ended the festival Animafest Zagreb. Once again, "Magic Mountain" enchanted the jury.
This year, 1700 films from 700 countries were submitted to Animafest Zagreb, and 55 films qualified for the main competition, including two Polish productions: "Magic Mountain" by Anca Damian and "Locus" by Anita Kwiatkowska-Naqvi. This year, the award for lifetime achievement went to Raoul Servais. Animafest Zagreb is the second oldest film festival after Annecy, which is dedicated entirely to animated films, and is one of the most important animated film festivals in the world.
The jury of the feature-length animated film competition, consisting of: Justine Bannister, Marcy Page, Boško Picula decided that the festival's Grand Prix went to "Magic Mountain" by Anca Damian. The jury emphasised that they were enchanted by the film-making and the poetic portrait of the protagonist's existential journey, as well as the documentary genre of the award-winning animated film.
"Magic Mountain" is an extraordinary story about the life of Adam Jacek Winkler, who himself believed that in his ardent and simple-hearted character, he resembled Koziołek Matołek, a hero of Polish children's literature. In the spirit of anti-communist resistance movement, he left Poland in 1965. He lived in Paris as an emigrant, where he became involved in active struggle against communism. When he heard about the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, he joined the Afghan people and fought under the command of Ahmad Shah Massoud.
The film is a Romanian-Polish-French co-production. It was made on a large artistic scale, within 80 minutes of the film, the audience can watch scenes made in several different styles, using various animation methods, collage and creative re-interpretations of existing film materials. A significant portion of the animation was made in Poland, created by Tomek Ducki with the help of great Polish animated film-makers and students of the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow.