The Ottawa International Animation Festival announces its winners at the 45th Anniversary of the Festival with Honekami (A Bite of Bone), Bob Spit-We Do Not Like People and Night Bus taking top Prizes, while Canada’s The Shaman’s Apprentice walks away with two awards.

OTTAWA (1 October 2021) – The Ottawa International Animation Festival (OIAF), the largest festival of its kind in North America, announces the winners at its 45th anniversary edition. Hosted online, this year’s festival received 2528 entries from 38 different countries from around the world. Winners were chosen from the 107 animated works selected for official competition.

The Grand Prize for Short Animation was awarded to Honekami (A Bite of Bone) (Honami Yano), an animated work reflecting on a young girl’s relationship with her father at his funeral.

OIAF ’21’s Grand Prize for Feature Animation was awarded to Bob Spit – We Do Not Like People (Cesar Cabral). This film brought viewers into the head of cartoonist Angeli and into the post-apocalyptic world of Bob Spit.

Canadian stop-motion animation, The Shaman’s Apprentice (Zacharias Kunuk), was also a big winner, taking home the Canadian Film Institute (CFI) Award for Best Canadian Animation along with the prize for Best Narrative Short.

This year’s Competition Short Jury was guided by the expertise of Jodie Mack (United States), Anne Koizumi (Canada), the OIAF ‘20 winner for Best Narrative and Canadian Animation, and Kang Min Kim (United States), the OIAF ‘20 Grand Prize and Public Prize winner.

OIAF ’21’s Competition Feature Jury was formed by Winnipeg animator Mike Maryniuk, Nadja Andrasev (Hungary), and Polish animator Mariusz Wilczyński, who took home the Animated Feature Grand Prize at OIAF ‘20.

The Kids Jury included children from across North America between the ages of 8-12. The winners of the Young Audiences Preschool and Ages 6-12 Competitions were selected through the Kids Jury’s careful consideration.

As per tradition, the OIAF ‘21 award statues were designed by Ottawa-based, scrap metal artist Tick Tock Tom. The statues are working phénakisticopes featuring an animation by New York artist George Griffin.

OIAF ‘21 continues online and in-person until October 3rd, 2021.

Throughout this weekend, audiences have the opportunity to watch the Official Competition screenings via Video-On-Demand (VOD), as well as behind-the-scenes talks, and the retrospectives and special screenings.

For those looking to attend in-person screenings in Ottawa, Archipelago (Félix Dufour-Laperrière) and The Best of Ottawa: Canadian Edition are screening at the recently reopened ByTowne Cinema on October 3rd.

Individual tickets for the VOD content are available for $9 CAD and the in-person screenings at the ByTowne Cinema are free. Note that public health guidelines are in effect at the ByTowne Cinema. Guests are required to show proof of vaccination status accompanied by photo ID to enter the cinema and are required to remain masked.

Tickets can be purchased on the OIAF Virtual Cinema website and registration for the free in-person screenings can be done via the ByTowne Cinema website. For additional information about their vaccine policy, please visit the ByTowne Cinema website.

Winner: Honekami (A Bite of Bone) | Honami Yano | Japan

Jury Comment: This film was made on top of traditional techniques. But it has the power to lead us in a new direction. In an image composed of dots, we freely cross places and memories as if we are all small dots. After looking at the work, we can see why the director used these techniques. And it leaves a long lingering impression.

Winner: Bob Spit – We Do Not Like People | Cesar Cabral | Brazil

Special Mention: Elulu | Gabriel Verdugo Soto | Chile

Jury Comment: For its melange of mainstream and DIY, documentary and fiction, ingenious and visually attractive story of an artist and his universe, the Grand Prize goes to Bob Spit – We Do Not Like People by Cesar Cabral, Brazil.

Winner: Night Bus | Joe Hsieh | Taiwan

Winner: The Shaman’s Apprentice | Zacharias Kunuk | Canada

Special Mention: Meneath: The Island of Hidden Ethics | Terril Calder | Canada

Winner: Un kilomètre à pied (Ten, Twenty, Thirty, Forty, Fifty Miles a Day) | Mathieu Georis | Belgium

Winner: Anxious Body | Yoriko Mizushiri | France and Japan

Jury Comment: Without visual texture, the film touches our bodies through its visceral fusion of the subconscious, unconscious, and conscious states of the mind and body.

Winner: The Shaman’s Apprentice | Zacharias Kunuk | Canada

Jury Comment: The Shaman’s Apprentice is a masterful work of storytelling and the sharing of traditional Inuit knowledge utilizing impeccably detailed sets, costumes, props and puppets and told beautifully with precision and care. Using the Arctic landscape as a metaphor to the spiritual world, Zacharias Kunuk invites us to learn about Inuit shamanism and spirituality, a part of Inuit culture that was hidden for so long by colonialism. Like the Shaman, Kunuk transmits his knowledge and teachings through this film, and it is as if he is turning to us at the end and asking, “What have we learned?”

Winner: Space | Zhong Xian | United Kingdom

Jury Comment: Space moves us through the cyclical nature of falling in and out of love with swooping shots, original and playful transitions, a simple yet bold and expressive style, and shows us that love, like animation, can be a cycle that repeats itself.

Winner: Bémol | Oana Lacroix | Switzerland

Special Mention 1: Konigiri-Kun Concert | Mari Miyazawa | Japan

Special Mention 2: S is for Spiders | Warren Brown | Canada

Special Mention 3: Ink | Erik Verkerk & Joost van den Bosch | The Netherlands

Winner: T’as vendu mes rollers (You Sold My Rollerskates?) | Margaux Cazal, Jeanne Hammel, Louis Holmes, Sandy Lachkar, Agathe Leroux & Léa Rey–Mauzaize | France

Special Mention: Only a child | Simones Giampaolo | Switzerland

Winner: One Day At A Time ‚The Politics Episode‘ | M.R. Horhager & Phill Lewis | United States and Canada

Winner: Strands of Mind | Adrian Meyer | Germany

Winner: Don’t Think About Her | Liza Desya | Sheridan College

Special Mention 1: Fleeting: Here and There | Gilnaz Arzpeyma | Concordia University

Special Mention 2: The GOAT | Alexandra Ouchev | Dawson College

Winner: All Those Sensations in My Belly | Marko Djeska | Croatia and Portugal

Winner: Abandoned Village | Mariam Kapanadze | Georgia

Winner: Steakhouse | Špela Čadež | Slovenia, Germany, and France

Winner: A Family That Steals Dogs | John C. Kelley | United States

Jury Comment: A Family that Steals Dogs uses sound to enhance an already visually compelling portrayal of the loneliness of grief and the consequential chaos in the mind. The comforting sounds of fire crackling and rain falling make us feel more isolated while the otherworldly tones are hauntingly soothing, reinforcing the tension between the protagonist’s conflicting thoughts and emotions as we become familiar with the unfamiliar and vice versa.

The Ottawa International Animation Festival (OIAF) is one of the world’s leading animation events providing screenings, exhibits, workshops and entertainment since 1976. OIAF is an annual five-day event bringing art and industry together in a vibrant hub and attracting more than 34,000 artists, producers, students and animation fans from around the world to the in-person event. OIAF was just named one of the 50 Festivals Worth the Entry Fee for 2021 and is on the Academy Awards short film qualifying list.

This year’s virtual OIAF runs September 22 to October 3. Visit the OIAF website at https://www.animationfestival.ca/