The Animator International Animated Film Festival returns to Poznan for its 16th edition.

Animator is the largest animated film festival in Poland. The first edition was held in 2008 and marked the culmination of the 60th anniversary of Polish animation. During each edition of the festival, more than 300 films from around the world are presented, including retrospectives, reviews, premieres or rarely shown works by animation pioneers. Since 2017, Animator has been a qualifying festival for Oscar nominations.

The program for the 16th edition is being developed in cooperation with new artistic director Adriana Prodeus. Adriana Prodeus has been working with the Animator IFFA since its first edition – she has participated in the festival as a selector, moderator and participant in debates. She teaches at the Art Institute of the Polish Academy of Sciences, specializing in avant-garde and animated film. She has curated film programs at Anthology Film Archive in New York, Giornate del Cinema Muto in Pordenone, the New Horizons Festival and others. She has also been a selector of the Polish Feature Film Festival in Gdynia for the past three years.

New for 2023 will be the Anime Jewels section, which is dedicated to the extremely popular in recent years and intensely developing animation from Japan and South Korea. The Retrospective section, which is well known to festival audiences, will show the directorial oeuvre of longtime Artistic Director and Animator Festival co-founder Marcin Giżycki, who passed away in 2022. The audience will also be able to watch a selection of films submitted by filmmakers from around the world as part of an open calla inspired by the motto of this year's edition – Searching for Yourself.

At the heart of Animator are the competitions: the International Animated Short Film Competition, the International Animated Feature Film Competition, the International Animated Series Competition and the Polish Animated Film Competition. The call for entries included 3250 titles from 114 countries; this year also saw a record number of entries for the feature-length competition. Prominent animators and animators from around the world are invited to join the juries of the competitions each year. Previous guests of the festival have included Mariola Brillowska, Daniel Gill, Andrzej Chrzanowski, John R. Dilworth, David Ehrlich, Eric Goldberg, Yoram Gross, Emily Hubley, Hisko Hulsing, Igor Kowalow, Bady Minck, Michel Ocelot, Quay Brothers, Bill Plympton, Phil Tippett, Gerald Potterton, Zbigniew Rybczynski, Raoul Servais, and major Polish animators such as Witold Giersz, Jerzy Kucia, Mariusz Wilczynski, Piotr Dumala, Kazimierz Urbansky.

The 16th edition could not lack outstanding guests. French director, César and BAFTA award winner Sylvain Chomet will come to Poznan to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the release of his cult film Trio of Belleville. Oscar-nominated Icelandic filmmaker Sara Gunnarsdóttir will also visit the festival. Her Academy Award-winning animation My Year of Dicks was also awarded at Animator 2022 in the Best Animated Series category.

Film screenings will take place at Poznan's Muza Cinema; the festival program also includes interdisciplinary events presented in the outdoor and club festival zone at the Pavilion in the old Warta riverbed. A number of events have also been planned in cooperation with cultural institutions, associations and local partners.

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