Eleven short films in development will participate in the VAF 2018 Třeboň pitching competition. The winning short film project will receive 2,000 EUR. Thanks to the cooperation with the European Animation Development Lab Animation Sans Frontières (ASF), one selected director or producer will receive a scholarship in amount of EUR 1,500. Tim Leborgne, project leader of ASF will follow the pitches in both categories and choose the winner. The price worth EUR 1,000 will receive the best short film and will cover the sound postproduction including studio and sound engineer for 5 days. This award is offered by Polish Playade Sound Studio by Piotr Kubiak.

The jury for Short Films pitching competition:

Urszula Łuczak has been a producer at Platige Image in Poland for over eight years now. She began working at VFX Department, where she was involved in movies such as Essential Killing, Melancholy and Uwiklanie. As a production manager, she created stereoscopic scenography for spectacles such as Polita for Buffo Theatre and Pilots for Roma Theatre. She also produced animation movies for the Qatar market: Hero and the message and Heroes and the mission. Her first full feature animation movie co-produced by Platige Image called Another Day of Life – a film in which she was involved as production manager – has recently been released into festival circulation

Andres Mänd is a producer and CEO at Nukufilm Studios, Estonia. He studied theatrical directing in Estonia, animation in Russia and art management in Finland. He worked as an animator at Nukufilm (1983-1996), as the Head of Animation Departement at Volda University College, Norway (1996-2017). He has animated over 40 puppet films, including TV commercials and music videos. He has also produced the majority of the graduation films from Volda University College over the last 20 years. Andres has served in the past as judges on short or animated film festival in Norway, Cuba and Estonia.

Manon Messiant a graduate of Sciences Po Lille, has worked on notable French productions such as My Golden Days directed by Arnaud Desplechin (2015) and Elle by Paul Verhoeven (2016). She then joined Kazak Productions, where she developed  a real thirst for animated films and worked with Gabriel Harel (Yul and the Snake) and Adrien Merigeau (Artistic Director of Song of the Sea by Tom Moore), among others. Now as production manager at Sacrebleu Productions, Manon is working on several upcoming animated films directed by Rémi Chayé (Longway North), Michaela Pavlatova (Tram) and Boris Labbé (Rhizome).

Terhi Väänänen is the producer, CEO and co-founder of Pyjama Films, a Finland (Turku) based animation studio specialised in artistically ambitious 2D animation projects. The studio’s first short, Elli Vuorinen’s Sore Eyes for Infinity (2016), produced by Väänänen, has been selected for 50 international film festivals and has won eight awards, such as the Anča Award and special mention at Animafest Zagreb. Väänänen has worked in the animation field since 2009, previously as the festival director of Animatricks Animation Festival and as the project coordinator of the Turku Region animation development project.

Dario van Vree following his animation studies at the prestigious KASK academy in Belgium, Dario has been directing animation shorts and series with an eye for the weird, the incentive and the power of character performance. His work is characterized by clarity, humour and a love for paradoxes. In addition to directing at his Amsterdam-based animation studio Studio Pupil, Dario teaches animation & direction at the Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam and is co-founder of the KLIK Amsterdam Animation Festival.

Additional jury member for ASF Award in both categories Short Films and Series/TV Specials:
Tim Leborgne graduated with a Master’s degree in social psychology from the Université Libre de Bruxelles in Belgium. In 1999, Tim had the good fortune of returning to one of his childhood passions, animation film, by working with Corinne Jenart and Marc Vandeweyer at Cartoon AEFA for four years, during which he participated in the creation and management of the European Training Network for Animation (ETNA) and to the organisation of numerous Cartoon Masters, Cartoon Movies and Cartoon Forums. In 2003, Tim joined The Animation Workshop / VIA University College in Viborg as the director of its Professional Training and Open Workshop (artist residencies) departments.

The ten best Series / TV Specials projects will compete in a pitching contest based on concise presentations and discussion with the jury and the audience. The winning short film project will receive 2,000 EUR. The winner and the runner up (Special mention) will have direct access to Cartoon Forum 2018 without the need to undergo competitive pre-selection. Thanks to the cooperation with the European Animation Development Lab Animation Sans Frontières (ASF), one selected director or producer will receive a scholarship in amount of EUR 1,500. Tim Leborgne, project leader of ASF will follow the pitches in both categories and choose the winner.

The jury for Series / TV Specials pitching competition:

Marc Bonny was born in 1955. After some years in cultural sector, he begun directing and programming an arthouse theater. Then he had the opportunity to work for 20th Century Fox in Lyon and learned about film distribution. Some years later he created Gebeka Films, an independent distribution company specialized in high quality films for a young audience. Some examples of films

being distributed by Gebeka since 1998 : Kirikou and the Sorceress (Michel Ocelot), The Boy Who Wanted to be a Bear (Jannik Hastrup), The Three Robbers (Hayo Freitag), Brendan and the Secret of Kells (Tomm Moore), A Cat in Paris (Alain Gagnol / Jean-Loup Felicioli), The Painting (Jean-François Laguionie), Moomins on the Riviera (Xavier Picard), My Life as a Courgette (Claude Barras), Zombillénium (Arthur de Pins), Louise by the Shore (Jean-François Laguionie) and many others. On the other side, Marc Bonny is also an exhibitor through The Comoedia, a nine screens arthouse theater set in Lyon.

Maciej Chmiel graduated from History of Art at the Warsaw University, Academy of Leadership at the Warsaw Polytechnique and received an MBA from the University of Illionois. He was involved with culture on a professional level starting from 1985 when he became a manager of the punk rock band Dezerter. Results of this five-year collaboration were one record in the USA, one in France and three in Poland. It was the first CEE band to tour Japan. He continued as journalist writing articles for the largest Polish daily newspaper and as a host of his own radio and TV shows, as well as the editor of music programmes in TVP, the Polish national broadcaster. Then he established his own production company which during ten years produced a dozen of documentaries and hundreds of TV programmes. After heading TVP2 for some time, he is for the last two years Vice Head of Department of Trade and International Cooperation in TVP.

Moe Honan is CEO of Moetion Films Ltd., which she founded in October 2013 and where she works as a producer and voice director of animated feature films and TV series. Moetion Films develops and produces content for child and family audiences. Moe won the Producer of the Year 2016 award at Cartoon Movie in Lyon. Since 2000, in conjunction with many international partners based in Germany, Luxembourg, Finland, Denmark, France and Canada, and with broadcasters such as NDR, WDR France 2, France 3, TVO, and the BBC, Moe has co-produced many animation projects including five award-winning animated feature films which have been distributed internationally. Most recently she completed Two By Two – Ooops! The Ark Has Gone (a.k.a. Ooops! Noah Is Gone), a 3D animated feature film co-produced with partners in Germany, Belgium and Luxembourg. The film was released in 2015 in the UK and Ireland. It has achieved over 4.2million EUR in box office sales and been distributed world-wide. Prior to her role as a producer, Moe worked in radio as a news presenter and arts journalist and also as a director and assistant director on documentary programmes such as Battle of the Somme and the series Battlefields for RTE and The History Channel and PBS.

Manuela Lumb started her career by helping establishing the animation Studio Film Bilder. She founded the distribution company Edition Film Bilder and was producing many prize winning short films. In 1998 she became commissioning editor at SWR and was responsible for Children’s Programme. Later she joined WDR and was commissioning editor for the “Show with the Mouse”, where she successfully produced many animation features and series and also live action. In 2008 she became Head of Children’s and Family Department at the Berlin-based studio TV Film where among others, she developed and produced the most successful German children’s brand for KiKA, “Kikaninchen”. In June 2016 she became Head of Development at MotionWorks, one of the leading animation production companies in Germany. Since April 2018 she works as an independent producer and consultant.

Éva Vass started her career in 1993 as a cultural columnist, presenter and reporter in a Regional TV in Hungary, later she moved to the Regional theater as a dramaturge. In 1997 she joined TV2 and worked first as a planner, then until 2014 as Head of Program Operations in the multichannel environment of TV2, Super TV2, Pro4, Fem3 (MTM-SBS Rt., ProSiebenSat1). She then spent a year as an editor in printed lifestyle magazine. Éva has returned back to broadcasting in 2015 – this time to MTVA, starting as Editor in Chief and working since 2016 as Director of M2 Channel. Éva has also served several times in various festival juries – at BANFF World Media Festival, Prix Jeunesse International, International Emmy Awards in Budapest and at the 10th Festival of European Animated Film and TV-Film, 2017, Kecskemét, Hungary.

Additional jury member for ASF Award in both categories Short Films and Series/TV Specials:
Tim Leborgne graduated with a Master’s degree in social psychology from the Université Libre de Bruxelles in Belgium. In 1999, Tim had the good fortune of returning to one of his childhood passions, animation film, by working with Corinne Jenart and Marc Vandeweyer at Cartoon AEFA for four years, during which he participated in the creation and management of the European Training Network for Animation (ETNA) and to the organisation of numerous Cartoon Masters, Cartoon Movies and Cartoon Forums. In 2003, Tim joined The Animation Workshop / VIA University College in Viborg as the director of its Professional Training and Open Workshop (artist residencies) departments.

Feature Film Projects: Pitching Competition

As this is a pilot year, we have left the selection of projects to VAF national coordinators, who know best of current production in their respective countries. The goal was to invite experienced producers who have a clear vision of their project and the condition that the project had already received some funding. After making their pitch, the teams will have a special feedback and networking meeting with experts invited by VAF - broadcasters, producers, distributors, fund members etc.

There will be two awards to compete for: firstly the Best Feature Film Pitch, the winning project will advance directly to the prestigious Cartoon Movie 2019, and secondly the Nespresso Audience Award.

The VAF Třeboň will take place May 1 – 3, 2018 within the International Festival of Animated Films Anifilm. For a full line-up of selected films visit: http://visegradanimation.com/selected-projects/.