(September 27, 2016 – Ottawa, ON) The 40th annual Ottawa International Animation Festival (OIAF) wrapped over the weekend. Sunday night saw a replay of the award-winning productions announced on Saturday night. The festival received a total of 2311 entries from 86 different countries and selected 80 short films and 7 feature films for competition.
The Nelvana Grand Prize for Independent Short went to Diane Obomsawin’s J’aime Les Filles (I Like Girls), a colourful series of narratives where women recount the discovery of homosexual desire in short, sweet vignettes (pictured above). Born in Montreal in 1959, Obomsawin spent twenty years in France where she began a career as a graphic designer. She returned to Quebec in 1983 and began to work in illustration, cartoon and painting. She studied animation at the Concordia University.
The Grand Prize for Features went to Louise en Hiver (Louise By the Shore), directed by Jean-François Laguionie who won a Grand Prize at the OIAF in 1982 with La traversée de l’Atlantique à la rame.
This year’s Short, Feature and Kids Competition screenings were judged by 3 official juries. The Competition Short Jury included animator Ann Marie Fleming (Canada), Brooke Keesling (USA) – Director of Animation Talent Development at Disney Television Animation, and Sarina Nihei (Japan), animator and winner of the OIAF 2015 Grand Prize for Short Animation. The Competition Feature Jury includes animation historian Giannalberto Bendazzi (Italy), former Grand Prize winner and animator Peter Millard (UK), and animation director and optical effects specialist Elise Simard (Canada). The third jury was comprised of Ottawa-area children between the ages of 8 and 12 who judged the Shorts and Series for Young Audiences Competition.
There is a list of all the winners at this year’s OIAF available online.
