International Competition Section

Aris Dimokidis (GR) - Journalist, Children’s book author

Aris Dimokidis was born in 1978 in Thessaloniki. He is a journalist, children's book author and podcast creator. He studied Media and Cultural Management in London, where he worked at the Museum of Childhood and the BBC. He is a LIFO collaborator since the 2000s, becoming editor of LIFO.gr in 2009, and carrying on up until 2017. He then created the well-received blog and podcast Mikropragmata, which has achieved audiences of millions, and the popular audio documentary series Hard Truths. He currently lives in Chalcidice, and goes on writing and telling stories in any way he can.

Bill Plympton (US) - Director

Bill Plympton is considered the King of Indie Animation and was the first person to hand-draw an entire animated feature film, The Tune. Born in Portland, Oregon, he moved to New York City in 1968 and began his career creating cartoons for publications such as The New York Times, The New Yorker, National Lampoon, Playboy and Screw. In 1987, his short Your Face was nominated for an Oscar®, and in 2005 he received another nomination for Guard Dog. His short Push Comes to Shove won the prestigious Prix du Jury at the 1991 Cannes Film Festival, while in 2001 Eat received the Grand Prize for Short Films in Cannes Critics’ Week.

After producing numerous shorts that appeared on MTV and Spike & Mike’s, Plympton turned to feature filmmaking. Since 1991, he has completed eleven feature films, eight of which—The Tune, Mondo Plympton, I Married a Strange Person, Mutant Aliens, Hair High, Idiots and Angels, Cheatin', Revengeance, and Slide—are fully animated.

Plympton has collaborated with Madonna, Kanye West, and Weird Al Yankovic on music videos and book projects, and has created commercials for brands such as Geico, Trivial Pursuit, Ford, Mercedes, Nike, and Taco Bell. In 2006, he received the Winsor McCay Lifetime Achievement Award at the Annie Awards. He also animated eight opening “couch gags” for FOX-TV’s The Simpsons, and six Trump Bites shorts—using real audio from Donald Trump—which reached #1 on The New York Times online and earned a 2019 Webby Award. He has also been honored with the National Cartoonists Society Lifetime Achievement Award.

Daniel Šuljić (HR)- Animation Director, Artistic Director of the World Festival of Animated Film-Animafest Zagreb

Daniel Šuljić is an animation film director and a musician. Born in Zagreb, he lives and works both there and in Vienna. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb, and painting and animation at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. From 2005 to 2008 he was lecturer at the University of Art and Design in Linz, and since 2006 honorary professor at Jilin College, China. 2010-2012, artistic consultant at the Croatian Audiovisual Centre; 2013-2017, member of the City of Zagreb artistic council for film. His films include Evening Star (1993), Leckdonalds (1995), The Cake (1997), Sun, Salt and Sea (1997), I Can Imagine It Very Well, 2004, Short Life (2007, co-dir. Johanna Freise), Transparency (2015), From Under Which Rock Did They Crawl Out (2018), have been shown at several hundred international and national film festivals, TV channels across Europe and earned numerous international awards. He is a member of festival juries and had several retrospectives. He is assistant professor at the Department of Animation and New Media, Academy of Fine Arts, Zagreb and from 2024, Head of Department. From 2018 to 2020 he was Croatian ambassador to the European Animation Awards. Artistic director of Animafest Zagreb since 2011.

Student - TV & Commissioned Films

Georges Sifianos (GR) - Honorary Professor of Cinematic Animation- ENSAD, Director

Born in Greece, Georges Sifianos, Holds a PhD in Philosophy and is an honorary professor of cinematic animation in ENSAD. His films include the shorts Smile (1974), City Scent (1994), Tutu (2001), I (2007), The Blind Writer (2021) and the feature length documentary Petrochemicals: Cathedrals of the Desert (1981). His interests include the confluence of animation with Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence. His most recent object of research is ways of studying motion in the Parthenon Frieze. Has been a member of juries in many festivals and has lectured in universities in Europe, India, Korea, Japan and China. His book The Aesthetics of Cinematic Animation Film was awarded the McLaren – Lambart Prize in 2014 and the Hemingway in 2015.

Deanna Morse (US) - Artist, Educator, President of ASIFA International

Deanna Morse is an artist, educator, and a life-long advocate for building peace through international connections. President of ASIFA International (oldest international animationorganization), a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (Oscars), and a champion of public art. Her diverse animation and experimental film/video work was broadcast on Sesame Street, and is in permanent collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Her films consider our relationships to landscapes, exploring ideas of place, time, and seasonal change. She lives in Southern Oregon, USA, on a lane with goats, chickens, native plants, and family. And a cat, named kitty.

Andrea Bauer (DE)- Head of program at Stuttgart International Festival of Animated Film 

After completing her studies in Romance Philology and Art History (MA) at the University of Tübingen, Germany, and in Lettres Modernes in Rennes, France, Andrea Bauer began her career as a freelance translator and editor. 1995-2000, Assistant Festival Director at the International Festival of Francophone Film in Tübingen/Stuttgart and at the Mediterranean Film Festival in Tübingen. Since January 2001, she has been working for Film- und Medienfestival gGmbH (FMF). Over time, she has assumed a leading role in program development and content curation, primarily for ITFS but also for other FMF media events. In 2015, she was appointed Head of Program. Through her longstanding work at FMF and her participation in various festivals, conferences, and juries, she has acquired extensive expertise in media and film—particularly in animated cinema—and has built a strong professional network within the national and international animation industry.


K.ID.S.

Lena Divani (GR) - Author & Former Professor of History, University of Athens

Lena Divanis is an author and was Professor of History in the University of Athens (Law School). She was a Visiting Research Fellow at Harvard and King’s College, University of London, as well as the League of Nations Archive (UN) in Geneva. She was a founding member of the National Committee for the Rights of Humanity, vice-chairperson of the National Book Centre and of the Organisation for Collective Administration of Linguistic Works and a member of the governing board of the Greek Broadcasting Corporation.

Her many published works include novels, short story collections, plays and children’s books. They have been translated into many languages and have been adapted for television. She wrote and presented two series of documentaries on historical topics for the channel Cosmote History, both based on her books. Her book Working Boy represented Greece at the 2024 Readers for Europe event.

Cristina Lima (PT) - Programming Coordinator CINANIMA Festival

Cristina Lima, born in Mozambique, holds a degree in Modern Languages and Literature from the University of Porto and a post-graduate qualification in Translation. For 37 years, she has been part of CINANIMA – International Animated Film Festival of Espinho, where she is currently Programming Coordinator, curator for other festivals, and co-responsible for managing the Jury and Guests. She has also served as a jury member at numerous international animation festivals.

Beatrice Mazzone (IT) - Director, Animation Artist

Beatrice Mazzone is an Italian director and 2D animation artist with over twenty years of experience. Her work spans projects for Italy’s national broadcaster, independent short films, and animated visuals for theatre productions. Deeply committed to education, she conducts workshops for children and teenagers and curates cultural initiatives in animated cinema, collaborating with several festivals, including Imaginaria. In 2022, she received the Best European Female Director award at Cortoons Gandia for the collective film Proiezioni.

AnimaPride

Angelos Frantzis (GR) - Director and Scriptwriter

Angelos Frantzis is a director and screenwriter. He was born in Athens and studied film at the Institut National Supérieur des Arts du Spectacle et des Techniques de Diffusion (INSAS). His films include Polaroid, The Dream of a Dog, In the Woods, Symptom, Still River, Happiness and Murphy’s Law. They have received multiple awards and have been screened in many international festivals. He is also a film critic and a mixed media artist.

Kassandra El Najjar (SY)- Actress, Performance Artist, Multidisciplinary Creative

Kassandra El Najjar is an actor and performance artist of Syrian and Palestinian descent, fluent in Arabic, Greek, and English. She has performed at the National Greek Theatre and Vault Theatre, and is actively involved in queer, feminist, and anti-racist festivals and projects. Her film work includes collaborations with Elvi Kalogiropoulou, Panos Paras, and Santiago Giralt. A strong advocate for trans visibility, she was the first trans immigrant to work in Greek theatre, aiming not to stand out as an exception but as part of a collective. Her work explores identity, gender, and community through hybrid storytelling and has been featured at the Athens Epidaurus Festival, Athens Pride, and Onassis Stegi.

Nora Ralli (GR) - Journalist, Author

Nora Rallis is a journalist in both print and audiovisual media. She lives and works in Athens. She is a Physics and European Studies (Political Theory and Sociology) graduate, and completed a postgraduate degree in Social and Cultural Anthropology at Panteion University. She has worked in television and radio (Alpha TV), while doing both political and cultural reporting in print media — the last 13 of which at Efimerida ton Syntakton. As part of her work there, she co-founded the film festival EFSYNema. She also writes plays and screenplays for cinema.

Gary Thomas (UK) - Producer, Curator Director of Animate Projects

Gary Thomas is co-founder and Director of Animate Projects, a Queer led UK agency that champions experimental animation, established in 2007, initially to manage the Arts Council England/Channel 4 AnimateTV commissioning scheme. With his Animate co-director, Abigail Addison, he established Animation Alliance UK. From 2011-2023, he also worked in the Film team at the British Council. He was part of the Five Films for Freedom team, an annual online film programme showcasing LGBTQIA+ shorts from around the world, in collaboration with BFI Flare. He gave talks on British animation in Indonesia and Vietnam, and led a week-long workshop in Cuba. Previously Head of Moving Image at Arts Council England, working with artist filmmakers including Steve McQueen, Andrew Kötting, Clio Barnard, and Jane and Louise Wilson, and on AnimateTV.

Gary is co-editor of The animate! Book and curated the Animation Breakdown symposium at Tate Modern in 2009. Gary was born and bred in a small town in Wales. He studied Media Studies at the Polytechnic of Central London, and has an MA in Art History from Chelsea College of Art.