Jun 20, 2017

The first ever Quirino Award honoring Latin American animators will be held in Tenerife

With over 100 animated features in development and production, a rapidly developing tv industry with original local productions, and multiple Oscar nods in recent years, the Latin American animation industry is on a roll.

The next big step: an awards show that celebrates Latin American animation talent and creativity.

The Ibero-American Animation Quirino Awards were announced last week at Annecy, and will debut in the first half of 2018 on the Spanish Canary island of Tenerife, a place that has recently made great strides toward establishing itself as a hub for European animation production.

The Quirino Awards will bring together artists and executives from throughout the Central and South American animation industries, in addition to the animation communities of Portugal, Andorra, and Spain, with the aim of creating new links and networks between the industries on either side of the Atlantic.

Named in honor of Quirino Cristiani, the Argentinian animator who directed El Apóstol, the first-ever animated feature film in 1917, the Quirinos will honor both the creative talent and industry of Ibero-American animation, with the strategic goal of developing the Transatlantic Ibero-American animation market, which represents around 650 million people.

“Now we can feel the momentum and the will of being together to build something greater than our countries,” Jose Luis Farias, one of the coordinators of the Quirino Awards, told Cartoon Brew. “I love to believe that we are all together a sole 'animation nation' with deep cultural and personal links, full of creativity that have now just awakened thanks to a new generation of professionals and artists who have the wish for change.”

The awards will recognize a broad range of formats, including feature films, television series, short films, student work, and internet animation.

Running alongside the awards show will be a multi-day co-production forum in Tenerife. Details on the forum will be revealed at a later date.

The awards are sponsored by Tenerife's tourism board, Turismo de Tenerife. Collaborators of the event include two major industry markets/festivals: 3DWire (Segovia, Spain) and Festival by Pixelatl (Cuernavaca, Mexico).

To keep up with new announcements about the first edition of the Quirinos, stay tuned to the official website PremiosQuirino.org and the event's Facebook page.