Feb 23, 2023

Animation festival world rocked by allegations of work theft for the second time in as many months

For the second time in recent months, allegations of plagiarism have rocked the animation film festival scene.

In December, we reported that Natalia Chernysheva's 2012 award-winning short "Snowflake" was showing at the festival with a new name, new credits, and a new director.

This time the victim is Bulgarian filmmaker Svilen Dimitrov. His 2012 short film "Rew Day" is now being entered and screened at the festival under the name "Friday," with Iranian Ramtin Serajpour credited as the director.

When Dimitrov and the producers of "Rew Day" from Miramar Film learned that their film was being shown incorrectly at the festival, they contacted Cartoon Brew, who had just read our article on "Snowflake" a few weeks earlier.

"We realized that cases like this were more common than we had imagined and that we should address the issue," Mila Voinikova of Miramar told Cartoon Brew.

The company then contacted several film festivals that had selected "Friday" to inform them that it was neither new nor original; Miramar also contacted film database sites such as IMDB and Filmfreeway; IMDB has since removed the retitled knockoff's page and Filmfreeway was used to submit imitations to film festivals.

In making contact, Miramar had two goals: "to end the fraud against our film as soon as possible, and to fully publicize this case and prevent such attempts against other films," Voinikova said. There is a saying in Bulgarian: "Lies have short legs."

Dimitrov added, "It is sad that people think that the success of a film festival brings more joy than the creative process. Any little thing that people do is more precious than being stolen."

He added that "the festival is a great success, but it is not a success in the sense that it is a success in the sense that it is a success.

After speaking with the Rew Day team, we contacted several individuals who screen shorts for festivals and websites and were able to obtain a version of "Friday" that is currently being submitted. After reviewing both films, we were able to confirm that "Friday" is the exact same film as "Liu Day" with new title graphics and credits.

Miramar Film has made "Liu Day" available on Vimeo for the sake of transparency and to reinforce their point. Below is a link to the film and a screenshot taken on Friday.

Cartoon Brew reached out to Serajipour's email and social accounts, but received no response. Additionally, since our attempts to contact him, Serajipour has removed his photo from his LinkedIn profile and deleted his Instagram account.

Although his social media profiles have largely been deleted, Serajipour appears in the following Youtube video promoting the Box Short Film Festival 2021 and is named as the festival's director:

Also, We also reached out to Filmfreeway for comment. Shortly after our request, a representative of the site replied, thanking us for alerting them to the violation and stating that they had suspended the accounts of the filmmakers associated with the project. We were unable to obtain any additional comments from that representative.

At the time this article was posted, the Friday Filmfreeway page was still active, but no longer contained information on Serajipur.

Finnish director, animator, and illustrator Joni Manisto recognized Dimitrov's work when he looked through the entries for the Turku Animation Film Festival. He had met Dimitrov at the Odense International Film Festival in 2012, where "Rew Day" won the Borghe Ring Award.

"Many years later, I was very surprised when I saw a screenshot of Svilen's film along with the submissions. However, it had a new name, year, country of production, and by a different director," he said.

After rewatching "Liu Day" to make sure his memory was accurate, he began posting about Friday on social media, warning other festival programmers that some were trying to pass off "Liu Day" as their film.

"I understand that I was not the first to notice this. For the selection committee, this is a very difficult situation. Of course, we haven't seen all the films in our history, and we can't check the background of thousands of submissions every year," he explained. The animation community is small, so when something like this happens, word gets out fast. We need to warn each other. For the festival, this is unfortunate and frustrating, but it is the original filmmakers who need to be protected the most."