"We are extremely sorry that early this summer Zagreb will not be able to host the world’s most significant animators. However, circumstances forced us to shift the festival dates for the first time in history. Our duty is to take a responsible and mature stand regarding the current situation, but let us hope that we will soon have a chance to present our entire programme," said Daniel Šuljić, the festival’s artistic director.

Awaiting for the new dates, Animafest Zagreb has prepared an attractive programme under the title Animafest Insights, available to all animation lovers on the festival website and social media pages. The programme was designed to give broader public an insight into the films screened at the festival, but also to serve as a reminder of the extraordinary success stories written by animation in recent years. A special charm of Animafest Insights will be an exclusive series of interviews with filmmakers introducing their films, to connect the audience even better with the artists and their animated hits.

The programme opens with Hedgehog’s Home, based on the namesake story by Branko Ćopić. The film was directed by the Canada-based Croatian filmmaker Eva Cvijanović, and it won the Audience Award for best short film at Animafest 2017, as well as many other international awards. You can watch Hedgehog's Home, as well as the interview with the author Eva Cvijanović, here. 

Animafest Insights will also present the following filmmakers in regular slots: Alice Guimaraes, Monica Santos (Amelia & Duarte), Alice Saey (Mark Lotterman – Happy), Celine Devaux (Sunday Lunch), Joanna Quinn (Girls Night Out), Max Porter, Ru Kuwahata (Negative Space), Tomek Popakul (Acid Rain), Nikita Diakur (FEST) and Veljko Popović (Cyclists).

In terms of organisation and programming, Animafest Zagreb 2020 is ready, but together with the Animafest Scanner VII symposium, it awaits better days. The new dates for this year’s edition are expected to be just as attractive as the new festival identity, designed with a detailed visual poetics by Yoriko Mizushiri, one of the most distinctive Japanese younger artists and a world-renowned animator, who has managed, with only a handful of films of a unique and special, idiosyncratic and recognisable aesthetics and poetics, to make an inevitable artistic impact on global animation trends, all the way from the USA to Croatia.

Her films, like Futon (2012), Kamakura (2013) and Veil (2014) are dreamlike and sensual, pastel studies of the senses – partly figurative and partly geometrical reminiscences of impressions and touches from small daily pleasures and pains like coffee, cakes, the warmth of the bed, the softness of the carpet, sting or human touch.

Yoriko Mizushiri has been nominated and garnered awards not only at the most important animation festivals like Zagreb and Annecy, but also at the biggest film festivals like Berlinale. She made a name for herself back as a member of the Shiripiro production collective and a student at the Joshibi University of Art and Design, where, inspired by the iconic mange cartoonist Yasuji Tanioka and young painter Tomoko Kashiki, she made some of her previous works, like Shiri-play (2005), Kappo (2006), Enyogu (2007), Lena Lena (2009) and Sushi (2011).