The Family Portrait was one of only 30 films competing at the first edition of the MORC Stop Motion Film Festival in Japan, dedicated exclusively to stop motion, yet the festival received as many as 1337 submissions. Lea Vidaković’s short took home the festival Grand Prize.   

In mid-November, the film scooped up the award for Best Film at the TOFUZI International Animated Film Festival, held in Tbilisi, Georgia. In addition, the short also celebrated after scooping up a Special Jury Mention at the Cinanima International Animated Film Festival in Epsinho, Portugal.

In total, The Family Portrait has garnered 10 awards and recognitions, including four Grands Prix.

Since its world premiere at this year’s World Festival of Animated Film – Animafest Zagreb, it has toured over 50 festivals, including PÖFF Shorts in Tallinn, International Leipzig Festival for Documentary and Animated Film DOK Leipzig (Germany), Ottawa International Animation Festival (Canada), StopTrik in Maribor (Slovenia), CINÉMED in Montpellier (France) and many others. 

“I am very happy and grateful to my team and the producers who helped me make this complex and technically challenging film. I am pleased that the film is understood and well-received on different continents, which I only could have hoped for. The turmoil across the world in the past two years has given this film a different context. Although in ‘The Family Portrait’ the threat of World War I was only very subtly hinted at as an invisible force threatening to collapse both the house and the family on a quiet Sunday afternoon, it was not the primary theme – but it has become one. This is unfortunately the always current, real and ageless topic, underlining the fragility and vulnerability of families, human beings, and their relationships”, said the film’s author Lea Vidaković.

The Family Portrait is a stop motion animation, set in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy at the start of the 20th century. The family relationships are told through a family of fourteen. The film portrays one Sunday afternoon in the aristocratic family home where Andras lives with his daughter Zsófia. They are caught by surprise by his brother Zoltan’s unexpected visit with a family of twelve in tow. The stop motion is a poetic, dark and somewhat humorous family tale in which family bonds and relationships are broken down and observed up close.

The animated film was shot during 2022 in the French city of Vendôme as part of the Ciclic Animation Residency, which also granted the project production support. The Ciclic Animation Residency has a tradition of producing short artistic animated films, while The Family Portrait is the first Croatian project to receive this support.

Besides the author, the sets and props were created by Marion le Guillou, Maude Gallon, Camille Scudier, Katrin Novaković and Bruno Collet. Animation was done by Marion le Guillou, Bilitis Levillain and Viollete Delvoye, while Iva Kraljević did the animatic and edited the film. The lighting design was done by Lea Vidaković, with Damien Buquen as assistant DOP and assistant director Katrin Novaković. 

The film’s producer is Draško Ivezić (Adriatic Animation), with co-producers Jean-Francois Le Corre for Vivement Lundi! (France) and Nikolina Vučetić Zečević for Biberche Productions (Serbia). 

The film has been supported by the Croatian Audiovisual Centre, City of Zagreb, Région Bretagne in partnership the CNC, Unité Cinéma ARTE France, residency NEF (Fontevraud, France), Film Center Serbia and the Ministry of Culture and Information of the Republic of Serbia.