Anibar International Animation Festival is the only animation festival in Kosova, and one of the biggest cultural events in the country. Since the beginning, the festival is organized and held in various settings in the city of Peja.
Anibar screens animated films coming from different places around the world, that in five cinemas, three of them set outdoors. Except for the screening of the films during the festival, Anibar organizes workshops, lectures, masterclasses, debates, presentations, special programs, and additional daily activities (concerts and camping).
Year by year, the festival endeavors screening qualitative films, in both, technical and artistic aspect of the view. The selection of entries is made in accord with criteria deriving from a limited staff of professionals who aim to balance the audience, artistic reviews, and the market.
Anibar has also socially influenced the youth community in Peja, and further, enclosed with the film screenings and other events, before, during and after the festival, a wide group of youngsters is engaged in helping and working with the idea and preparations of the festival, meanwhile they gain an experience which as a matter has been truly acknowledged by a vast support of different local and national institutions (private and public).
Awards & Prizes
– Crown for Best International and the price of 1000€
– Crown for Best Balkan and the price of 500€
– Crown for Best Student and the price of 500€
– Crown for Best Feature Film and the price of 500€
– Crown for Best Animated Music Video and the price of 500€
– Crown for the Audience Award
Rules & Terms
1. Festival
Anibar International Animation Festival, organized by NGO Anibar, will be having its eleventh (11) edition in Peja, Kosovo. The festival has five cinemas, three of them outdoors, and will be screening approximately 300 films. Besides the film program, the festival organizes workshops, masterclasses, debates, panels, meetings with filmmakers, presentations, special programs, concerts, and pitching sessions. The call for entries will be open until the 31st of March.
2. Film submissions
2.1. There is a fee of 3 dollars to submit your film for consideration to the Anibar International Animation Festival.
2.2. Any animated film or music video, including computer-generated animation and combinations of live-action, that are completed after January 01, 2019, can participate. Films completed prior to January 01, 2019 are not eligible for participation. This rule does not count for Feature Film Competition, in this category we accept films that have been completed in 2018, 2019, and 2020.
2.3. In order to be considered for competition at the Festival, the film must be less than 30 minutes long (including credits). For Feature Film Competition, the film should not exceed 120 minutes (including credits).
2.4. For pre-selection purposes, films or music videos must be submitted through FilmFreeWay
2.5. The selection committee will be the only authorized festival staff to have access to the film files.
2.6. All the information required of you from the submission portal should be fulfilled, that being:
• Contact information (name, phone number, and email),
• Credits,
• Specifications,
• Long and short synopsis,
• Screenings and awards,
• Director’s biography and filmography,
• Film stills and poster,
• Dialogue list with timecodes (in English).
2.7. All films that are not in the English language should have English subtitling, otherwise, they will not be considered.
3. Competitions and Awards
3.1. Anibar International Animation Festival has a program that contains 6 (six) different categories where you can submit your film. 5 (five) of these categories are programs in competition. Submission of the same film in different categories is accepted, but each submission in different categories has the fee of 3 dollars per each category.
3.1.2. Panorama Programs will be curated with the films that were not included in competition programs. This program will be non-competitive.
3.1.3. The festival does not include workshop films in competition programs.
3.1.4. The categories and competitions are as follow:
– International Competition (short animated films under 30 minutes, from every country of the world),
– Student Competition (short animated films under 30 minutes that were completed as part of university studies, graduation films included, from every country of the world),
– Balkan Competition (short animated films under 30 minutes, produced in Kosovo, Albania, Montenegro, Macedonia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Greece, Slovenia, Turkey, and Romania),
– Feature Film Competition (feature animated films not longer than 120 minutes’ maximum, from every country of the world),
– Music Video Competition (animated music videos under 10 minutes, from every country of the world),
– Kids and Teen Programs (short films under 30 minutes that are produced for the children audience, from every country of the world)
3.2 For the five competition programs, the winning films are rewarded with Anibar Crown and prize money.
3.2.1 The money prize will be rewarded for competitions as found in this list:
– Crown for Best International and the price of 1000€
– Crown for Best Balkan and the price of 500€
– Crown for Best Student and the price of 500€
– Crown for Best Feature Film and the price of 500€
– Crown for Best Music video and the price of 500€
– Crown for the Audience Award
3.3. Festival staff will decide on the composition of the international and local juries of the competition programs. The juries will decide the awarding of the prizes of the respective competitions.
3.4. The festival has three juries: Grand Jury (responsible for evaluating films for International and Balkan competitions), Student Jury (responsible for evaluating films for the Student competition), and The Feature Jury (responsible for evaluating Feature Films competition and Music Video competition).
3.4.1. None of the jury members may be involved in the production or distribution of any of the films they judge.
4. Selection
4.1 The Selection Committee decides on the selections for the competition and panorama programs.
4.1.2 The committee will decide if films of music videos are accepted based on the following criteria:
* Artistic originality
* Educational impact
* Artistic excellence in story, concept, design, animation, and music.
4.2. All applicants having submitted a film for pre-selection shall be informed prior to the opening of the Festival if his or her film has been selected for participation in the official Festival program.
4.2.2. The Festival is not obligated to supply a reason as to why a film has not been selected as part of the Festival competition.
5. Technicalities after the selection
5.1. All the accepted and rejected films shall be informed about their participation in the festival the latest by May 1st.
5.2. In the event your film gets selected to be part of the competition program, the authorized film distributor is required to send a screening HD file format of the film online. The specifics of the required screening format will be sent together with the email announcing the selection of the film.
5.2.1. All files should be sent digitally, and the due date for all materials is to be set in the official email
5.3. All films in a language other than Albanian will be electronically subtitled in Albanian. This service of translating and screening of subtitles will be handled by the Festival.
5.4. All films must be presented in Original Language and must be subtitled in English (if not otherwise specified). Subtitling expenses are the sole responsibility of the film’s Producer.
5.5. The Festival will use all materials cited in Article 2.6 for promotional purposes and in order to compile the Festival catalog. The Festival bears no responsibility for published inaccuracies in the original submission materials.
5.6. The awards ceremony will take place on the 19th of July. If possible, a film representative (the Director or the Producer) of the awarded films shall be present in Peja for the ceremony. If it is not possible for a representative to be present, the Festival will kindly request that he or she makes a short videotaped acceptance speech to be played during the award ceremony in Peja.
5.7. The Festival will invite filmmakers to Peja whose films have been selected for one of the competitive sections for three to five nights and will cover all accommodation expenses for this period. Travel expenses may also be covered for participants with limited funds. (This will be evaluated and determined by Festival staff on an individual basis.)
6. Press and Marketing
6.1. All the images, stills, trailers, making of, and sketches, will be used as promotional material on our social media channels and website.
6.2. If your film gets selected, the festival has a right to using up 40 seconds of the film/trailer for promotional purposes on Kosovo National TVs, Anibar YouTube Channel, and Anibar Vimeo Channel.
6.3. For the further promotion of your film, you can send printed promotional material of your film to the festival which will be distributed and available for free in our cinemas, information center, media center, and library (posters, flyers, stickers, postcards, buttons).
Mailing address:
Hasan Prishtina NO 73,
Peje, 30000
The Republic of Kosovo.
6.4. For the purpose of populating the archive of the festival, we would kindly ask you to send us a DVD copy of your film together with the promotional material.
7. Jurisdiction
7.1 Once a film has been selected and invited to participate in the Festival, said selected film cannot be withdrawn from the Festival program.
7.2 The festival does not pay screening fees for any film in the program, being that short, feature, in competition, panorama, or special program.
7.3. Anibar is entitled to screen any film selected for Anibar Festival competitions in 2020 as part of its non-profit educational activities throughout 2019 and 2020, within programs such as ‘Winners of Anibar 2019” and “Best of Anibar 2019”, without paying any film license fees for these activities.
7.4 In the case of any mail requests, all shipping costs, as well as any charges peripheral to shipping, i.e. Customs duty and/ or clearance, etc., are the sole responsibility of the applicant. Anibar International Animation Festival will cover the cost of the return shipment.
