The CICLIC Award offers financial support in the amount of 25,000 euros and a two-month-long residency in the French city of Vendôme for the project Saima – Scenes from a Midlife Crisis.

“This award means a lot to us, because it is the first step finding financial support for the project in France. CICLIC has recognised the potential of our film among 12 feature animated projects, which is a huge success for Croatian and Estonian animation, as well as for feature animated film in general. Since it is a film project for an adult audience, it is challenging to offer it to an industry that is used to feature animated films being exclusively intended for children. With this project, we will try to attract a wider audience because it deals with current and relevant topics such as midlife crisis, intergenerational trauma, and motherhood. We believe that many people will be able to relate to it and will respond in positive ways because it is a comedy with elements of horror parody”, said Draško Ivezić, credited with creating the animation, directing, and writing the script alongside Chintis Lundgren.

Saima – Scenes from the Midlife Crisis is a future animated film that is part of the same cosmos as the other award-winning short of this creative duo: Toomas Beneath the Valley of the Wild Wolves, Manivald, and Life with Herman H. Rott, as well as the animated series project in development – Manivald and the Absinthe Rabbits.

This time, the film follows the fox Saima, Manivald’s mother, who discovers the path to enlightenment while struggling with the infidelity of her partner Ludwig and the frayed relationship with her mother.

The project is produced by Croatian studio Adriatic Animation (of producer Draško Ivezić) and Estonian Chintis Lundgreni Animatsioonistuudio (of producer Chintis Lundgren).

Niko Radas’s animated short Psychonauts was awarded at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival receiving a Special Mention of the City of Annecy jury.

Created as part of art therapy at the Vrapče Psychiatric Clinic, the process of making the film involved the Clinic’s patients who came up with the concept, created the production design, and lent voices to the characters. The film visualises the experience of mental illness, portraying them as characters leaving the human body and mind. Psychonauts was produced by Filip Gašparović Melis from the Croatian Association of Digital Artists.

Cover photos: Saima – Scenes from a Midlife Crisis project team receiving the award at MIFA; Niko Radas receiving a Special Mention at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival