v“Am I A Wolf?” named best at Turkish animation festival

The festival, which is dedicated to short animated movies, took place in Istanbul from October 16 to 18.

“Am I A Wolf?” produced by Iran’s Institute for Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults is about a group of students who are performing a play called “The Wolf and the Seven Little Goats” in which everybody has a role. The students are totally taken in by their roles in a way that the boundary between reality and acting can hardly be distinguished. Meanwhile, the child who is acting as the wolf and is doomed to be defeated feels lonely and irritated. He takes his role too seriously, and there is a bit of chaos. At the end, the presence of the other children and his friends near him take him out of this atmosphere.

The movie received several awards in Iranian and international events, including the Grand Prix at the 12th Paris International Animation Film Festival and the Light of Asia Grand Prize at the 15th Indie-AniFest Korea Independent Animation Film Festival in September 2019.

The film also won the Golden Dove for best animated film at the 62nd DOK Leipzig in Germany in November 2019 and a prize worth 1 million yen at the 18th Hiroshima International Animation Festival in Japan in August 2020.

Canlandiranlar Film Festival is annually organized by the Canlandiranlar Association, a society of Turkish animators.

Any audiovisual animation created frame by frame by whatever technique and made for the cinema, television or any other screening platform is allowed to compete in this event.

The award for best student film went to “Carlotta’s Face” co-directed by Frederic Schuld and Valentin Riedl from Germany.

“Kantentanz” by Camille Geibler  and Elisabeth Jakobi from Germany was selected as best first film, while the French animation “Trois Francs Six Sous” co-directed by Clémence Ottevaere, Florence Blain, Louise Leblond, Varoon Indalkar, Morgane Ladjel, and Hugo Valdelièvre-rattier from France won the special jury award.

The award for best Turkish film was presented to “The Needle” by Ceylan Beyoglu, whose fellow Turkish animator Ozge Akarsu’s “Being with the Other” received the special jury award. 

Photo: “Am I a Wolf?” by Iranian director Amir-Hushang Moin.