Animated documentary by Joanna Kozuch Once There Was a Sea… was nominated for the Slovak Film and Television Academy’s Film Award – Sun in the Net in the Best Animated Film category. The winner of the award will be announced on April 9, 2022.
An overview of the nominated films and filmmakers can be found here.
Our project Journey to Yourland was selected within 8 projects that will be presented at CartoonNext in Marseille, France.
CartoonNext offers 3 days dedicated to the evolution of the creative and digital industries. CartoonNext is both a seminar and a pitch event dedicated to the new opportunities created by technological innovations, new modes of content consumption and new audiovisual formats.
The main focus is on well-curated keynotes: experienced professionals bringing their vision on the future of your business. On the other hand, producers coming from all over Europe will pitch innovative projects, displaying their transmedia strategy, and getting a direct and thoughtful feedback from international animation experts with various background.
All selected projects you can find here.
Our upcoming project of animated TV series I Want To Know! was selected for the prestigious co-production forum m:brane, that will take part in March in Malmö, Sweden.
m:brane is a unique meeting place with focus solely on projects aimed at a young audience, age 3-18 years. Cinema, tv, documentaries, interactive, VR, immersive storytelling. m:brane is a B2B platform for producers with high visions, financiers, buyers, distributors and sales agents plus a number of professional observers, where they get an exclusive introduction to creative and highly innovative projects at an early stage.
More than 200 professionals from over 20 countries meet during three intensive days in a warm and friendly atmosphere in Malmö.
m:brane is a unique, international platform with focus solely on Young Audiences projects in development, looking for financing and partnerships. The Forum, taking place annually in Malmö, Sweden set the stage for a highly curated range of independent content from documentaries, interactive, web, apps, and features for cinema to tv and 360 immersive storytelling aimed at young audience, age 3-18 years.
m:brane has dedicated its work to become a Greenhouse of development, experiment and opportunity for the network of progressive Producers and Decision Makers forcefully bringing innovative, artistic content with an edge to life for sophisticated, intelligent and savvy young audiences.
Complete list of the selected projects you can find here.
animated, PL/SK, planned premiere: 2027
It was at night of April 25, 1986 that the explosion, that destroyed the reactor of Unit 4 of Chernobyl’s nuclear power plant, also destroyed the lives and health of an unknown number of people in the former Soviet Union and not only there. The consequences of this tragedy were more tragic because the Soviet authorities took advantage of the fact that radiation seems quite safe at first sight. You do not see it, you do not feel it and, at first, you do not even notice how harmful it is to you. Many people were therefore exposed without knowing it and they received large doses of radiation. But the people may not have received it at all! They didn’t have to, because they were not people who were directly in the plant or in the immediate vicinity of the plant at the time of the explosion. They were people who came into contact with the contaminated material later, often under quite strange circumstances and always quite unnecessarily. When a disaster occurs in a totalitarian state, the attempt to cover up its consequences leads to another disaster, that is equally or even more dangerous and lasts years or even decades.
The film Once There Was a Town… is a surreal tale of a radioactive sausage and a several-metres-high mountain of contaminated wool, which the director watches while riding an old, crumbling Ferris wheel in the centre of Pripyat – an abandoned town. It’s an animated documentary about immense human stupidity and the consequences of strange political decisions that most affect the lives of people who were powerless against the force of those decisions.
Animated documentary by Joanna Kozuch.
The development of this film was supported by Slovak Audiovisual Fund.
Projekt bol prezentovaný na týchto fórach:
Director: Joanna Kozuch
Screenplay: Joanna Kozuch
Producer: BFILM (SK) – Peter Badač
Co-producer: XXX
Art Design: Joanna Kozuch
Joanna (1977) is director, visual artist and animator. She graduated at Academy of Fine Arts in Poznan (PL) and University of Silesia in Katowice (PL). She is also a teacher at Animation department at Academy of Performing Arts in Bratislava, where she has received her PhD (SK).
The Game (short animation film,2004)
Fongopolis (short animation film, 2013)
39 Weeks, 6 Days (short animation film, 2017)
Music Box (short animation film, 2019)
Once There Was a Sea… (short animation documentary, 2021)
Once There Was a Sea…: The Story of Aral Sea (short animation documentary, 2021)
Producer
BFILM – Peter Badač
peter(at)bfilm.sk
Festivals and sales
MIYU distribution – Luce Grosjean
luce.grosjean(at)miyu.fr
Our animated film SH_T HAPPENS has been selected by the editors of the prestigious VOD platform Vimeo as a Staff Pick. It will be available to all audience exclusively from February 23, 2022.
After screening in the Orizzonte Short Selection at the Venice International Film Festival and the Animation Spotlight at Sundance, SH_T HAPPENS has been screened at over 130 festivals and won 20 awards.
Animated documentary by Joanna Kozuch Once There Was a Sea… after its Slovak screening was also presented to the international audience. After its premiere at the prestigious short film festival in Clermont-Ferrand inFrance, it received the Student Jury Prize there.
Once There Was a Sea… is a story about the Aral Sea. Most of the changes in climate and landscape in the area of the Aral Sea are the outcomes of one of the worst man-made eco-catastrophes in human history. The Aral Sea is dying. The idea of the film Once There Was a Sea… came to mind of director Joanna Kozuch during her train trips through the region of Middle Asia in 2008 and 2014. The film is inspired by the place on the borders of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan and the stories and destinies of the people that she has met when I was exploring the disaster of Aral Sea.