This January, celebrate the eighth edition of Animation First, the biggest animation festival in the United States! This year's festival will run from Tuesday, January 21 through Sunday, January 26, and will present seven feature-length films and five short film programs, with a special focus on Swiss animation. Curators Delphine Selles-Alvarez and Chloe Dheu explain, "The 2025 edition of Animation First offers a bold mix of features, shorts, talks, and VR that range from family-friendly to experimental and off the charts. Playful, serious, engaging, and at times radical, the festival will transport audiences to places far and wide."
This year, the festival presents seven feature-length films (including three U.S, two New York, and one East Coast Premiere) and five short film programs. Fifteen guests from around the world join us for filmmaker talks, a first look presentation, and QandA discussions. Back by popular demand, Animation Speak/Easy joins us for the second year in a row, as does our juried competition of the new Francophone shorts programs. The festival will also feature virtual reality experiences, our annual Student Short Film Competition, and even an interactive make-your-own stop-motion experience for guests in the Tinker Lounge. We're also thrilled to have Swiss animator and director Georges Schwizgebel design our second-annual limited-edition Animation First series poster.
With films for adults, teens, and kids, the festival is crafted to engage and entertain guests of all ages throughout nearly a week of programming. Buy your festival pass today!
Schedule of Events:
11:00 am: Savages
By Claude Barras, 2024, Switzerland, France and Belgium, 87min, DCP
Starring Benoit Poelvoorde, Laetitia Dosch, Michel Vuillermoz
In French with English subtitles
Following the success of his acclaimed 2016 animated film My Life as a Zucchini, Swiss director Claude Barras returns with an enchanting, humor-filled stop-motion ecological tale set on the Southeast Asian Island of Borneo. Collaborating with screenwriter Nancy Houston, the film centers on Keria, who takes in a baby orangutan named Oshi just before her cousin Selaï arrives to stay after escaping his family's ongoing conflict with local logging companies. Together, the trio must fight back against the planned destruction of their beloved ancestral forest. Brought to life by Barras' intricately crafted puppets, the story unfolds against the rich backdrops of the tropical trees, plants, and rivers of the island's rainforests.
Part of Animation First's focus on Swiss Animation
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5:00 pm - 7:00 pm: Virtual Reality
Throughout the festival, L'Alliance New York's Library will be free and open to the public for virtual reality experiences from French studios and distributors, including Ito Meikyu by Boris Labbe, Grand Prize winner at Venice Film Festival.
Ito Meikyu
by Boris Labbe, 2024, France, 20min
US Premiere
Ito Meikyu, which loosely translated means "wandering thread," is a virtual reality experience that develops around references from Japanese art history and literature (The Fukinuki Yatai, The Tale of Genji, The Pillow Book) and unfolds as a large sensory fresco with strong emotional potential. A set of drawn, animated, and sound scenes together recreate a kind of subjective world in the form of a labyrinth. The virtual wandering space-composed of fractal architectures, and inhabited by plants, objects, animals, men, women, motifs and calligraphy-allows us to access different scenes based on the randomness of our choices. The result is a kind of hide-and-seek game with the user as the omniscient spectator.
5:30 pm: Professional Panel - Creating Animation with AI: Opportunities and Challenges
AI's transformative power is available to artists more widely than ever before. How are animators and filmmakers integrating AI into their creative processes, from conceptualization and scriptwriting to production and final creation? What role can AI play in enhancing animation projects? What are the potential benefits and drawbacks of using AI in animation? Artists Boris Labbe (La Chute) and ValOne (New Specimen), along with producers Lesly Lynch (Space Cowboys Studio) and Ron Dyens (Sacrebleu Productions) discuss their current projects integrating AI, the tools they use, AI's capacity to push creativity to new realms, and trends they foresee in their fields.
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7:00 pm: Animation Speak/Easy
Calling all animation lovers, artmakers and curious audiences!
Animation First is thrilled to host our second Animation Speak/Easy during the festival. Join us for a one-of-a-kind evening of animated inspiration, discussion and drinks.
Created by NYC-based animation filmmakers, Animation Speak/Easy is an interactive event where three guest artists are invited to share an animated short that inspires them, followed by a lively audience discussion. Their bimonthly events bring together curious artmakers who are passionate about animation and its constantly changing forms.
Stay tuned for our guest speakers!
Special thanks to Lisa LaBracio, Andy London and Anna Samo, co-founders of Animation Speak/Easy.
