The very first Niigata International Animation Film Festival is to be held from March 17 to March 22 in Niigata City. and they have announced the list of nominees for the festival.

The nominees along with their English names, names of director, country of origin, year and runtime are as follows:

Theatrical version Vampire in the Garden

English title: Vampire in the Garden.
Director: Ryotaro Makihara.
(Japan / 2022 / 123 minutes)

Khamsa – the Well of Oblivion

English Title: Khamsa – the Well of Oblivion.
Director: Vynom
(Algeria / 2022 / 77 minutes)

Knor

English title: Oink
Director: Mascha Halberstad
(Netherlands / 2022 / 72 minutes)

Le Petit Nicolas Qu’est-ce qu’on attend pour être heureux?

English title: Littile Nicolas Happy as can be
Director: Amandine Fredon, Benjamin Massoubre　
(France / 2022 / 86 min)

Myši patří do nebe

English Title: Even Mice Belong in Heaven
Director: Denisa Grimmová & Jan Bubeníček
(Czech Republic, France, Poland, Slovakia / 2021 / 88 min)

Opal

English title: Opal
Director: Alan Bidard
(Martinique, France / 2021 / 85 min)

Saules Aveugles, Femme Endormie

English title: Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman
Director: Pierre Földes
(France, Canada, Holland, Luxembourg / 2022 / 110 minutes)

Thee Wreckers Four Nightmares

English title: Thee Wreckers Tetralogy
Director: Rosto
(Netherlands, France, Japan / 2020 / 44 minutes)　

Unicorn Wars

English title: Unicorn Wars
Director: Alberto Vázque
(Spain, France, Japan / 2022 / 80 minutes)

When You Get To The Forest

English Title: When You Get To The Forest　
Director: Eric Power
(USA / 2021 / 73 min)

They also released a new KV for the festival:

The festival focuses on the feature length commercial animation movies and aims to be the Asia’s largest festival with a competition for animated films.

For the first festival 21 works were submitted from 15 countries around the globe of which 10 works were chosen.

The countries who submitted the works are Japan, France, the United States, and Algeria.

The festival will be judged by Mamoru Oshii who is also the Chairman of the Judging Committee. He commented about the lineup of movies, “Since this film festival is a competition focused on feature films, the spotlight will be on films that have not been too big or too art-oriented, and which have had no audience until now. I expect that it will be a hit“

Programming Director Naoshi Sudo also commented on the highlights of the first competition section, saying, “A large number of high-quality works that embody the trends in animation from around the world have gathered. There is no doubt that it will be a hit,” he said.

Source: Comic Natalie