(September 25, 2017 – Ottawa, ON) The Ottawa International Animation Festival (OIAF), North America’s leading animation film festival, announced the winners of its 2017 Official Competition Saturday at an awards ceremony held at Saint Brigid’s Centre for the Arts. The OIAF received a total of 1992 entries and selected 105 short films and 5 feature films from 85 different countries.
The Nelvana Grand Prize for Independent Short went to Nikita Diakur’s Ugly, a simulated short film about two beings trying to find peace in a dystopic neighborhood. The Grand Prize for Features went to the surrealist romantic comedy Night Is Short, Walk on Girl, directed by Masaaki Yuasa. Yuasa made OIAF history this year by becoming the first filmmaker to have two nominations in the features category, with his film Lu Over the Wall also in competition.
This year’s Short, Feature and Young Audiences Competition screenings were judged by three official juries. The Competition Short Jury featured illustrator, art and animation director Janice Nadeau (Canada), Marta Pajek (Poland), and Theodore Ushev (Bulgaria/Canada), animator and winner of last year’s Cartoon Network Award for Best Narrative Short Animation (Blind Vaysha). The Competition Feature Jury comprised of the award-winning director and writer of Child Dream Christophe Gérard (France), former Grand Prize winner and animator Peter Millard (UK), and animation director and optical effects specialist Elise Simard (Canada). The third jury is comprised of Ottawa-area children between the ages of 8 and 12 who judged the Young Audiences: Preschool and Ages 6-12 Competitions. In addition, we also had members of the Canadian media pick a winner for our Media prize, with Di Golding, Ramin S. Khanjani, and Pat Mullen awarding The Tesla World Light.
A selection of the Festival’s award-winning films were screened on Sunday, September 24. Click here for the complete list of award-winning animated films.
