The next from Bruno Simões, whose “Pip,” when released, became YouTube’s all time most-watched animation short with 540 million views. “Winnipeg, Seeds of Hope,” a chronicle of Nobel Prize winner Pablo Neruda’s finest achievement. And Tallinn Grand Prix winner, “Because Today is Saturday,” from Portugal’s Alice Eça Guimarães.
All three Catalan animation titles play at Annecy this year, in an 11-title spread, counting both the festival and MIFA, which captures the rich range, talent and spirited co-production drive of Catalonia’s still fast-growing animation sector.
This year’s Annecy Mifa market will also open a window on the dazzling achievement and potential of projects put through artistic tech program Ibermedia Next.
“Ezcazú Souls,” for example, used Blender’s Grease Pencil module, “combining trad 2D with a 3D world, working in symbiosis with Geometry Nodes, that produces spectacular results,” notes producer Laura Dauden. Photos or videos of real environments were digitally reimagined, the texturing of characters and props achieved by “painting directly onto the models – a technique we use to evoke the aesthetic of Latin American muralism,” she adds.
Watch out too for emerging talent such as the co-directors of “The Journey,” Susana Casares, ex-head of creative talent development and investment for Netflix Spain and Portugal, and Júlia Francino, who founded and directed Barcelona film school ESCAC’s Animation and VFX Department for a decade and was a writer on the 2026 Goya-nominated short “Paradise Buffet.”
