As Hedgehog’s Home enters the last stage of post-production, we are also wrapping up Nighthawk by Špela Čadež, our co-production project with Finta Film. Špela’s second professional film (following Boles) will premiere in the Official Competition of the Ottawa International Animation Festival. You can read more about the film in our announcement for the OIAF. Alongside Nighthawk, the OIAF Competition program will also feature Planemo by Veljko Popović, while Petra Zlonoga’s Dota will screen in the World Panorama program of the festival.

There are also several awards from Croatian festivals which we haven’t had the opportunity to bring to your attention, so we would like to list them here:

-         Travelling Country by Vessela Dantcheva and Ivan Bogdanov (Compote Collective, Bonobostudio) was awarded Best Croatian Film at this year’s Animafest, while Peter’s Forest by Martina Meštrović (Kreativni sindikat) received the Special Award by jury member.

-         The Tabor Film Festival also recognized Martina’s film, awarding it with the Special Jury Mention in the Domestic Competition.

-         Travelling Country received the Special Mention in the short animated film category at Supertoon Festival.

-         The Croatian Short Film Revue granted us several new awards: Here There won the Special Jury Mention, Dota Best Animated Film, Planemo Best Animation, and X Tape (made by Dragan Mileusnić and Željko Serdarević, our distinguished designers) Best Editing.

-         Travelling Country also won Best Minority Co-production at the Croatian Film Days. Along with four other awards granted to the films we are promoting, this fine collection of accolades rounds up nicely the successful period we’ve had at Croatian festivals.

Crossing borders. In the past month or two, we have made numerous entertaining compilations for international film festivals, and we hope to have successfully introduced our films to the international audience, bringing them closer to Croatian animation.

-         Fest Anča, a Slovak animation festival (29 June – 3 July), screened Alexander Stewart’s Here There in the International Competition program, as well as hosting Vanja Andrijević as a member of the Slovak Film Competition Jury. The Festival also screened a compilation of films from Bonobostudio: Flower of Battle (Simon Bogojević Narath), She Who Measures (Veljko Popović), Father (Ivan Bogdanov), The Market (Ana Hušman), Simulacra (Ivana Bošnjak, Thomas Johnson), Sonámbulo (Theodore Ushev), and Always or Never? (Jelena Oroz).

-         Animator, a Polish animation festival taking place in Poznan (5 – 16 July), organised an extensive presentation of Croatian animation, with half of the films in the program coming from Bonobostudio: Hunger (Petra Zlonoga), Levitation (Marko Meštrović), New Hippie Future (Dalibor Barić), Father, and Simulacra.

Another compilation program is yet to take place, from 20 to 27 August, at the Concorto Film Festival in Italy. Alongside Travelling Country, which will screen in the Official Competition, there will be another program curated by the Festival's programmers – Bonobostudio in Focus. The selected films are: Dota, Hunger, Levitation, Peter's Forest, Planemo, She Who Measures, Je criais contre la vie. Ou pour elle (Vergine Keaton), Morana (Simon Bogojević Narath), Conversation (Ana Horvat), and Train (Olivier Chabalier). Following Concorto, we are announcing a showcase of our studio at Balkanima in the autumn, but more on that later.

In addition to the usual stops at Annecy and Animafest (about which we wrote in detail), since May, our films have screened at some of the most interesting contemporary festivals around the world. Let us mention Oberhausen (The End/Land, Tomislav Šoban), Vienna Independent Shorts, New Horizons, and Edinburgh (Here There), the Melbourne International Animation Festival, Guanajuato, and Vila do Conde (Planemo), the ExiS (Almost Nothing, Ana Hušman), as well as some of the famous, great festivals taking place in the nex month or two: Hiroshima (Sonámbulo) and the above mentioned Ottawa, i.e. the OIAF. If you find yourself in the region, come and look for us at Supertoon in Šibenik, the Sarajevo Film Festival, Vizura Aperta in Momjan, Animanima in Čačak, etc. You can find out more about the upcoming festivals in our calendar, which is regularly updated.

Although film festivals are our specialty, we are no strangers to exhibitions as well. Lately, we have become even more active in this regard due to Ana Hušman’s Almost Nothing, which is mostly shown in museums and galleries. The first exhibitions hosting Ana’s film were held at Guangdong Times Museum (South by Southeast. A Further Surface exhibition) in China, the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rijeka and at the Zagreb Salon of Visual Arts (Challenging Humanism exhibition), after which we have relocated to the coast, to the Split Museum of Fine Arts (Time Robbers exhibition), where you can find us until the end of August. We will continue our tour in October, at the October Salon in Belgrade. In addition to Almost Nothing, the audience there will also have the opportunity to see Postcards, another film by Ana.

Finally, we would like to share some of our future plans. This year, we await the completion of several films in (co)production and are announcing the start of production on two new titles: Jelena Oroz’s debut film, Two for Two, and a puppet animation by Ivana Bošnjak and Thomas Johnson (Imbued Life), the long-awaited follow up to their debut film, Simulacra. More on everything after the summer break.

And now, we are shutting down our computers (in theory) and wish you a pleasant vacation – filled with good books, relaxation, and films!