A Wooden Toy Dreamed of Paper Boats (2020)

Half a Life

After a traumatic encounter, a young gay Egyptian joins the LGBT rights movement. When his safety is jeopardized, he must choose whether to stay in the country he loves or seek asylum elsewhere as a refugee. "Half a Life" is a timely story of activism and hope, set in the increasingly dangerous, oppressive, and unstable social climate of Egypt today.

Inès

Inès is facing a difficult choice. Tonight, she thinks about the decision she will make.

Serlasanha

Plot unavailable

SIX GUYS

SIX GUYS is an exploration of horror, grief and the mind and is inspired by works from Junji Ito as well as Charlie Kaufman's "I'm Thinking of Ending Things".

Thunder

A woman’s face disappearing behind, and emerging from, a pair of hands. Flashing lights. An empty building full of dark hallways. Designs drawn in the air with light and long-exposure cinematography.

Prince Loseno

This short film utilizes intricate clay animation to tell of King Ngolo, who is without a male heir. Jealousies among his three wives and with his first love — now the court witch doctor — thwart birth of a successor. Finally blessed with a male heir, the king dies during the Prince's coronation; "Birth and death are twins in the destiny of man," concludes the narrator-griot.

Athomic

A Scientist-physicist created a living atom that here ran on will. Without control he brings many destructions, though follows kind intentions. But a scientist eventually compels him to work on a benefit to the people.

Alien Xmas

A young elf mistakes a tiny alien for a Christmas gift, not knowing her new plaything has plans to destroy Earth's gravity — and steal all the presents.

Hudson Geese

A goose remembers his last migration.

Éiru

Éiru is the smallest child of an Iron-Age clan. All she wants is to be a mighty warrior who is taken seriously by her kinfolk. But when the village’s well mysteriously dries up, only she is small enough to descend into the belly of the earth to investigate and bring the water of life back to her people. Éiru is the story of a child in search of a quest, and a goddess in search of a champion.

Mortys

An emotional and generational conflict between mother and son in the twenty-first century, except for one detail: Mother is none other than death.

Bang, Bang

It's hunting season, as well as Eda's 25th birthday. As a present, her father offers her an apartment under seizure.

Divisional Articulations

Repetition and distortion drive this audiovisual collaboration between composer Lux Prima and visual artist Max Hattler, where fuzzy analogue music and geometric digital animation collide in an electronic feedback loop, spawning arrays of divisional articulations in time and space.

Manivald

Manivald is a fox in his early 30s. He is still living at home with his mother. One day a young hot wolf called Toomas comes to fix the washing machine. A love triangle develops between the three of them. Things get out of hand and Manivald realizes that it is time to move out.

How the Lion Cub and the Turtle Sang a Song

The Tortoise composed a song and the Lion cub learnt it by heart and they sang it together.

B.

The true story of B.: Torn between a cold relationship with K. and her feelings for another woman, shy and insecure B. is heading for a disaster. For too long she has suppressed her desire and lived a lie. But is it really too late for B. to follow her heart?

Rain in the Sunshine

Schoolboy Hinata has a big crush on his classmate Shigure, but is too shy to tell her. On the day Shigure is leaving, Hinata flies off on the wings of a bird chasing after her to tell how he feels!

The Portrait Studio

Late 19th century Japan: a studio photographer who always captures his clients’ best smile. One day he tries to coax a smile out of a little girl, but… A nostalgic tale of a relationship that transcends wars and disasters.

Alleycats

Nail, the last surviving warrior of the Siamese clan, breaks into enemy territory with only one goal on his mind: avenging his father’s death.

The Unseen

When Tehran hosts visiting foreign dignitaries, the local authorities clean up the city’s urban image through the controversial process of ‘urban beautification’. Those who are deemed unsavoury are rounded up – drug users, prostitutes and the homeless who sleep in cardboard boxes on sidewalks and who they would rather remain unseen. When these very important people leave, the men are released but the women are kept as wards of the state. An animated documentary made using hand-crafted cardboard miniatures and the voices of women to tell their story, one that has been five years in the making. A story that shows how the face of a city can change, but what is underneath often does not.

Rising Hope

The path is known to all, but few follow it. Rising Hope – once the fastest horse in the race, tries to be one of the few.

Gondora

A short movie about a guy living in his own world.

The House That Jack Built

Story about the cow with the crumpled horn that tossed the dog that worried the cat that killed the rat that ate the malt that lay in the house that Jack built.

Explorers

Explorers is a idealistic look at the future of space travel, seen from the perspective of those who dare to venture into the unknown.

Stuck Together

A bus full of people on a trip is stopped by a policeman who isn’t satisfied with the bribe he is offered for granting the bus passage. To continue on their journey, the passengers will have to join forces.

Rejected

A hilarious collection of animated television commercials that were rejected because of their creator's failing grip on sanity.

A Midsummer's Night Dream

The first puppet film shot in CinemaScope. It is based on the famous poetic comedy by William Shakespeare. Three worlds meet in this story: the noble world of three Athens couples, a common popular world of tradesmen amateur theatre and a fairy-tale happiness of magic creatures as elves and nymphs. The film is considered the most remarkable Jiří Trnka's work and a milestone in the history of the world animation.

Papa Bouteille

We follow an 8 years old child's daily life. From their eyes, we see their dad’s alcoholism. They are full of life, joyful and sometimes full of melancholy. The protagonist only lives their normal life. They like riding bikes, reading comic books while dreaming of a fantasy world. They love their dad, he’s often off, but he’s full of tenderness. When they get stung by a wasp, he takes care of their booboos. Papa Bouteille is a poetic film. It takes the spectator along in the character's own intimacy.

Pispisa-khanum and Mouse-bey

The animation was based on Abdulla Shaig's "Tig-tig khanum" fairytale published in 1910.

Pikachu's Vacation

Pikachu and the gang learn responsibility, teamwork as well as cooperation during their Summer vacation at Pokemon Island.

Aquarela do Brasil

José Carioca, showing Donald Duck around South America and introducing him to the samba

A Bird in a Guilty Cage

Sylvester Cat spots Tweety Bird in a display window of an after-hours department store and sneaks inside through a mail server chute. Tweety flees Sylvester by hiding in a hat pile and a doll house, evades the shots from a rifle Sylvester uses, and escapes in a vacuum tube. Tweety sends a dynamite stick through another tube, and Sylvester swallows it, thinking it is Tweety. The dynamite blows up inside Sylvester after the cat leaves the store and walks down the street.

A Corny Concerto

Elmer Fudd introduces two pieces of classical music: "Tales of the Vienna Woods" and "The Blue Danube", and acted out by Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig, Laramore the Hound Dog, a family of swans, and a juvenile Daffy Duck.

Destino

Short film to a song of love lost and rediscovered, a woman sees and undergoes surreal transformations. Her lover's face melts off, she dons a dress from the shadow of a bell and becomes a dandelion, ants crawl out of a hand and become Frenchmen riding bicycles. Not to mention the turtles with faces on their backs that collide to form a ballerina, or the bizarre baseball game.

Contretemps

Living with OCD, Anna has an organized routine. This balance breaks when her sister forgets a piece of instrument. To bring it back, Anna has to face a world out of her control in which her fears materialize.

L3.0

Leo, a Hi-Tech ‘pet’ robot, wanders alone in Paris following the mysterious disappearance of nearly all living species.

Le vœu

Plot unavailable

Kalikangiaroi

“Kalikangiaroi” (also called Skalapountari) are Cypriot fantasy creatures. Mischievous, funny-looking, thin, hunchbacked creatures, sometimes wearing a long pointy hat or even having big bat-like wings, Cypriots were terrified of Kalikangiaroi. Kalikangiaroi hide in the depths of the earth all year long and rarely come above the ground. However, come Christmas day they surface and their crazy reign begins for 12 long days and nights. Their favorite pastime is to play pranks, tease and cause trouble to humans and create mayhem with the sole purpose of having fun! They playfully tease people by tugging at their clothes, scare them with their screeching voices or frighten domestic animals. One thing Kalikangiaroi loves more than teasing is a piece of “loukaniko” traditional sausage.

Posted No Hunting

An encounter in the woods is captured on a trail cam.

Dream

The short follows the dream of a young boy in which strange whale teleports him to a fantasy land where a happy cat named Pero (modeled after the character in the Nagagutsu wo Haita Neko anime that serves as Toei Animation's mascot) appears. The piece is entirely dialogueless.

Shalabham

A struggling artist going through a creative block rendering his mind void of inspiration.

Olivia and the Invisible Earthquake

Olivia, a 12-year-old middle class girl, is forced to reorganize her basic needs when her family (mother, little brother and herself) is evicted and forced to live in a squatted apartment on the edge of the big city, in a rough neighborhood. Her mother can no longer bear the situation and falls in a depression, so Olivia has to replace her. It means caring for her brother and her own mother, while dealing with the feeling of an emotional earthquake. But she is not alone, Olivia will make friends that will help her to see her own life from other points of view. Because things don’t always happen the way we want, but we can choose the way we live them.

The Inventor

The insatiably curious and headstrong inventor Leonardo da Vinci leaves Italy to join the French court, where he can experiment freely, inventing flying contraptions, incredible machines, and study the human body. There, joined in his adventure by the audacious princess Marguerite, Leonardo will uncover the answer to the ultimate question – "What is the meaning of it all?"

Rudolph's Shiny New Year

Rudolph must find Happy, the baby new year, before the midnight of New Year's Eve.

Midnight's Garden

The moon shines, a young couple plays in the forest. Their game leads them to an unfamiliar garden, in the middle of a clearing. Unaware of danger, the young lovers enter the maze of a garden at midnight. Little by little, they are submerged by a intoxicating spell. They lose themselves in the strange labyrinth. Will they manage to break the spell that keeps them prisoner?