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“Tangles” won the Grand Jury Prize at the 9th annual Animation Is Film Festival. Directed by Leah Nelson, the 2-D animated film follows a family impacted by their mother’s battle with dementia.
“We loved the fluid 2D
animation which uses a stark monochrome framing to bring to life the personal story of a family impacted by the mother’s battle with dementia,” the features jury said. “We were especially impressed with how director Leah Nelson and her perfectly cast voice team were able to remain faithful to Sarah Leavitt’s graphic novel which tackles a serious, painful subject with great beauty, honesty, and a gentle touch and also offers a great flashback to 1990s-era San Francisco.”
The Fumi Kitahara Special Jury Prize was awarded to “Iron Boy,” directed by Louis Clichy. The award was named in memory of publicist and champion of AIF’s mission Fumi Kitahara, who died in 2025. The film also won the Features Audience Award.
The jury said: “’Iron Boy’ is pure beauty from the medium we all love. Louis Clichy’s ‘Iron Boy’ was an easy stand-out thanks to its beautifully crafted water-color-like and Chinese ink-brush style visuals and how it told a story inspired by the director’s own memories of growing up in rural France. We also admired the way Clichy conveyed a world of emotions with his impressionistic visuals as well as his depiction of a young boy’s personal struggles with a physical handicap and the heartfelt portrayal of a strained father-and-son relationship which avoids sentimentality and the pitfalls of a traditional comic-of-age story.”
“Paper Trail,” directed by Don Hertzfeldt, won the Shorts Jury Grand Prize. The jury described the film as “unique and profoundly moving.”
The Shorts Special Jury Prize went to “Please,” directed by Anna Mantzaris. The jury called it “a wonderfully made, funny, and tender film that captures the absurdity and very human longing for connection.”
The 2026 feature competition lineup included “Cherry and Virgin” (Masanao Kawajiri), “Ghost — End of Night” (Shingo Natsume), “Iron Boy” (Louis Clichy), “Jim Queen” (Nicolas Athané and Marco Nguyen), “Julián” (Louise Bagnall), “O Filho Da Puta (Son of a Bitch)” (Otto Guerra, Érica Maradona, Tânia Anaya and Sávio Leite), “Tangles” (Leah Nelson), “The Violinist” (Ervin Han and Raúl García) and “Viva Carmen!” (Sébastien Laudenbach).
The shorts in competition this year were “Acid City” (Jack Wedge and Will Freudenheim), “Because Today is a Saturday” (Alice Eça Guimarães), “Blessed” (Birute Sodeikaite), “Core Dump” (Alona Rodeh), “Daughters of the Late Colonel” (Elizabeth Hobbs), “God is Shy” (Jocelyn Charles), “Hag” (Anna Ginsburg), “It’s Not a Phase Mom” (Nataël Renault, Tianhui Song, Anna Watson, Léa Mau-Glicenstein, Riley Cords and Reni Park), “Living With a Visionary” (Stephen P. Neary), “Paper Trail” (Don Hertzfeldt), “Paradaïz” (Matea Radic), “Please” (Anna Mantzaris), “Saba” (Liron Topaz), “Tuna Tartare” (Lena Greene), “Ultra Strong” (Catherine Lepage), “What We Leave Behind” (Jean-Sébastien Hamel and Alexandra Myotte), “With Tapes and Toasts in the Car” (Kiana Naghshineh) and “Winter in March” (Natalia Mirzoyan).
Over its four days, this year’s Animation Is Film Festival also included the first big-screen presentation of Dana Terrace’s “Knights of Guinevere,” a special screening of Laika’s “Wildwood” with director Travis Knight, a behind-the-scenes look at Disney’s “Hexed” and a presentation of work-in-progress “Clara and the Below,”
