Sep 13, 2019

Kids Animation, the Film festival has announced 10 features in the competition lineup

The lineup for the third edition of Animation Is Film (AIF), L.A.'s increasingly buzzy animated feature film showcase, has been announced. Ten films will play in competition at the festival, which runs October 18–20 at the TCL Chinese Theatre in Hollywood.

The event, which is produced by indie animation distributor GKIDS in partnership with Annecy Festival, Variety, and ASIFA-Hollywood, champions the sorts of artistically minded animated features that tend to get overshadowed in the U.S. by big-studio releases. This year's selection includes works from Asia, Europe, and North America. Some are by noted auteurs, while others have built up plenty of hype on the festival circuit. Most are U.S. premieres.

These ten movies will vie for two jury prizes and an audience award. Curiously, nine of the 12 jury members served last year, too. In all, seven people have been on the jury at all three editions of AIF. This is highly unusual among film festivals, where the norm is to appoint an entirely new jury each year.

The program doesn't end there: AIF presents an array of special screenings and events, too. Chinese box-office phenomenon Ne Zha will be shown out of competition, as will a newly-restored print of Hungarian Marcell Jankovics's cult classic Son of the White Mare.

There will also be sneak previews of Frozen II and Netflix's Klaus, a making-of presentation on Matthew Cherry's short Hair Love, and more.

Read on for the full lineup of films in competition, along with official synopses - where we've covered the film before, we've hyperlinked the titles. A list of jury members follows. For more information and ticket purchases, head to the festival's website.

2019 Animation Is Film jury members

(Image at top: “Weathering With You.”)