site.btaFrench Short Film Les Bottes De La Nuit Wins Grand Prix at 21st World Festival of Animated Film in Varna

The French short film Les Bottes de la nuit by Pierre-Luc Granjon won the grand prix of the 21st World Festival of Animated Film in Varna. The award was announced at the closing ceremony of the festival on Sunday in Varna’s Festival and Congress Centre. 

In Bulgarian animation category, The Birdman by Andrey Tsvetkov received the award. Highest recognition was given to I Found a Box by Eric Monchaud of France in the children’s programme and to Bunnyhood by Mansi Maheshwari of the United Kingdom in the student category. The award for best feature film went to A Story About Fire/Ran Bi Wa by Wenyu Li. 

The Debut Award went to the Bulgarian film Balconada by Iva Tokmakchieva, which also received a special mention in the Grand Prix category. The Bulgarian production The Paper Minotaur by Maria Nikolova was recognized for its demonstration of strong literary culture by the Union of Bulgarian Film Makers. The Union of Bulgarian Artists presented its prize, a painting by Ivan Ninov, to Ravenera by Teodor Ralev. 

“The World Festival of Animated Film in Varna continues to fly,” said the festival’s director, Prof. Anri Kulev, during the closing ceremony of the 21st edition. He compared the challenges a festival team must endure such as the uncertainty of each festival edition’s success to those faced on our planet, thanking the team for its hard work. “I desperately wish this hall would fill as it did many years ago, but such is life. We continue to fly,” added Kulev.  

This year’s edition hosted two workshops. The first enabled six children to create a short animation with the help of mentors Karine Miralles and Anton Zhekov, which was screened at the closing ceremony. Its theme was the lunar eclipse, also encoded in the festival’s logo this year. The animation’s soundtrack came from the 1946 French song The Sun and the Moon. The logo was inspired by the blood moon eclipse that was visible in the sky on Sunday. 

At the Dobri Hristov National School of Arts in Varna, another workshop produced a zoetrope, which was displayed in front of the awards ceremony’s venue. The device was invented in 1834 by William George Horner. 

More than 70 films from over 20 countries took part in the 21st edition of the World Festival of Animated Film in Varna. BTA was the media partner of the event.