GRANDTOON / STUDENTOON / SUPERTUNE
LUCIJA MRZLJAK is a Croatian animation film director and illustration artist based in Tallinn Estonia. She studied at fine arts academies in Zagreb, Krakow, Prague and Tallinn. She completed her MA studies in Animation at the Estonian Academy of Fine Arts as a student of Priit and Olga Pärn. Since 2016 she co-directed several award-winning animated short films with Morten Tšinakov in Eesti Joonisfilm studio in Tallinn and Adriatic Animation studio in Zagreb: Demonstration Of Brilliance In Four Acts (2017), The Stork (2020) and Eva (2022). Eeva has been premiered at Berlinale 2023, screened and awarded at numerous film festivals around the world and short-listed for Oscars 2024. In 2019 she collaborated with Oscar winning musician Glen Hansard, directing a music video “The Closing door”. Also Lucija is a lecturer at the Estonian Academy of Fine Arts and Aalto University in Finland.
ANA NEDELJKOVIĆ graduated in painting from the Faculty of Fine Arts in Belgrade. She was awarded a PhD in art practice at the same faculty. She is a visual artist, director, animator and educator. Her first film “Rabbitland”, co-directed with Nikola Majdak (2013) was awarded the Crystal Bear at the Berlinale. It has received numerous other awards and has been shown at more than a hundred festivals worldwide. Their second film “Untravel“(2018) was screened at Berlinale, Annecy and Sundance, nominated for the Annie Award and received numerous awards. Their third film “Money and Happiness” (2022) has been premiered in Locarno, and screened at Annecy and numerous other festivals. At present they are working on project development for their first animated feature film “New Rabbitland”. Working within their own studio, they also make many commercial animation projects as well as conducting animation workshops. She lives and works in Belgrade, Serbia
SASHA SVIRSKY was born in 1980, in Soviet Runo village, Stavropol area, USSR. Graduated as a painter. Self-taught animator. In 2008 began to work as an independent animation film director. Explores the possibilities of digital animation, revising its purpose as an entertainment and applied medium. Uses animation as an artist’s tool, unlocking the potential for visual experiments and creating philosophical narratives and essays. He has made numerous films. Among his awards at the Hong Kong International Film Festival, Grand-Prix at the Festival of Animation Berlin, Best Animation Film at 17th IN THE PALACE etc. His two films: “My Galactic Twin Galaction” (2020) and “Vadim on a walk” (2021), premiered at the Berlinale.
COMIC BOOK / MAGAZINE / FANZIN
PIA NIKOLIĆ was born in Ljubljana, Slovenia. She is an editor of the magazine Megafon and has her talk show (In vivo veritas) and show about film (Iiin … Akcija!) on Megafon TV. She is a sociologist, who started to work in the field of comics in 2013, when she started the only radio show about comics in Slovenia (Stripofilija at Radio Študent Ljubljana), which she still edits today. This is also the year she started to write reviews of comics, do the interviews and other articles about comics, which she already published in Mladina, Literatura, Apokalipsa, Stripburger, Ekran, etc. She is a member of the organizational board of monthly events about comics in Kino Šiška (Razlita Tinta) and all three Slovene comic festivals (Festival stripa Tinta Ljubljana, Festival of Fantasy and Comics Grossmann, Celje Comic Festival). She was also participating in round tables and with lectures at Zagreb festival of comics and street art (OHOHO) and Balkanska smotra mladih strip autora (Leskovac). She is also the founder of Comic Ccorner at Slovene Book Fair and a counselor for the award Golden Pear for quality books for children and youth. Occasionally she lectures to librarians all over Slovenia, who cooperate in the project Reading Badge. From the beginning, she is coordinating the main award for comics in Slovenia Zlatirepec, which she connected to the international award for translation in comics Sophie Castille Award, which is going to be handed out in Slovenia for the first time this year. She is a president of Slovene Association of Comics and Similar Sequential Art Packa, with which she already organized an exhibition of Slovene comics, cooperated in international 24-hour drawing of comics for two times already, organized comic olympic games on air at Radio Student, comic quiz, etc. Since 2017 she has been directing live comics, with which she invented a special form of synchronization of one comic panel at the time (which is displayed on a big screen) with a group of radio moderators who play roles and a technician who takes care of foleys, atmospheres and music. With seven different live comic events they have been performing all over Slovenia, in Zagreb and in October they will perform in Berlin. She is also regularly lecturing, leading workshops and round tables in the field of comics.
PAKITO BOLINO (FR) is a multi-track artist, screen printer, comic book author, exhibition curator, editor and musician. His publishing house, Le Dernier Cri, founded in 1993, allows him to do only what is close to his heart: he publishes his works and those of others in screen-printed books with limited editions, he makes films whose madness goes beyond imagination, organizes residencies, exhibitions and micropublishing fairs. Its nervous line, associated with saturated compositions, evokes both the ultra-liberated figuration of Robert Combas and Gary Panter, as well as the Heta-Uma aesthetic of the Japanese artists close to the Garo magazine. Le Dernier Cri is also a collective of extraordinary artists who evolve at the antipodes of narrative and conventional illustration, unceremoniously exploring the field of wild images. A universe that is often destabilizing, raw, obsessive and instinctive. Based in Marseille, on the Friche de la Belle de Mai site, Le Dernier Cri is recognized worldwide thanks to the energy and pugnacity of its instigator. The collective is also the author of several animated films such as Les religions sauvage, which brings together more than thirty artists, or Mondo DC which you will have the chance to discover during this festival with a live soundtrack. Impossible to label, Le Dernier Cri doesn’t fit into any box and that’s a good thing!
GORAN DUPLANČIĆ, born in 1972 in Split. He has been fond of drawing and comics since childhood. Although he made thousands of drawings and started dozens of comics during his childhood, he nevertheless decided on a more “serious” career and became a scientist, a theoretical physicist at the Ruđer Bošković Institute. He returned to comics at the end of 2007, thanks to the Internet and comics initiatives initiated by Darko Macan. The old love rekindled and since then he publishes short comics more or less regularly on the Internet and in various comic magazines, and he was also one of the editors of the online comic monthly MojStrip. He became more widely known after the publication of the autobiographical comic strip “Vojna”, which was first serialized on the Internet and eventually published classically, on paper. The comic follows the experiences of conscripts of the JNA who found themselves on the “aggressor” side in the Slovenian War of Independence in 1991. To the author’s surprise, “Vojna” was a real hit and in a year and a half it saw three editions (two in Croatia and one in Slovenia). In the form of an album, he also published a collection of comics made during the comic marathon “24 hours of comic drawing”.
MENTOR FOR CHILDREN’S JURY
IVA ŠEGOVIĆ. What defines me in work, and in life in general, is first of all temperament, optimism, positive attitude, humor, curiosity, research, and most of all the innate ability to gather and connect people (often incompatible!). Many moves and decisive choices in my youth, at least as far as I’m concerned, are clearly the result of the subconscious, of what we really want, and what we’re not fully aware of. Such was my rash decision to replace numbers, analyzes and graphs of economics with the study of preschool education. and forever become richer for hundreds of children who, even when they grow up and become parents themselves, will always be my kids. And I am their, slightly unusual, loud, smiling, singing, but dear and favorite aunt. My city and my kindergarten provided me with the best possible framework for professional development, learning, improvement, exchange of experiences, realization of new ideas, implementation of projects. There, I presented our country and the positive practices of our preschool education in the best possible way. Regardless of the same education, each educator develops some kind of more pronounced interest that makes the greatest contribution to the team. I definitely found myself in music, stage expression, communication, design and program management, but I am happy to learn, master and apply some other forms of work.
I believe that lifelong learning is really not a phrase, and I took advantage of the opportunity and completed my graduate studies and earned a master’s degree in early and preschool education.