American film "Forex" won the Grand Prix award 2021 Neum Animated Film Festival

The sixteenth edition of the Neum Animated Film Festival ended on July 1st. Due to the coronavirus pandemic the festival was held online this year as well. By adding up the scores of seven members of the expert jury, the winners of eight awards were announced. The Grand Prix award of this year's NAFF edition was won by the film "Foreign Exchange", by Corrie Francis Parks from the USA. Corrie Francis Parks animates sand and other unusual materials, her film raises the question: How much is a handful of sand worth in the vast landscape of the global economy?





The award for the best 2D animation went to the Bosnian author Aleta Rajič, for the film "Natural selection", while the film "This side, other side" from Iran was declared the best in the category of 2D and 3D animation.





According to the expert jury, the film "Flower and the girl" from Great Britain had the best clay puppet animation, while the award for visual art went to Roman Burmakov, the author from Russia for his film "Krasnoludki"..



The award for the best music at the 16th online edition of NAFF went to the film "The March of the Missing" from Mexico, by author Marcos Almada.





Film "Croach" from Argentina was declared the best student film, while the award Dušan Vukotić, which has been awarded since 2017 in honor of the Oscar winner, went to the author from Serbia this year - Masha Avramović for the film "Stuck together". This award is given to young authors in the region as an incentive for further work.

Members of international expert jury 2021 Neum Animated Film Festival Mindy Johnson (USA) Award-winning author, historian, filmmaker, educator, musician and more, Mindy Johnson’s creative accomplishments reflect the diversity of her talents and experience.

A leading expert on women’s roles in animation and film history, Mindy frequently writes and speaks on early cinema, animation, women’s history, and creativity. She was recently honored with the 2020 ASIFA–Hollywood Animation Educators Forum Faculty Grant and the 2019 Academy Film Scholar Award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences Grant Foundation, for continued research and writing on the contributions of the earliest women within our collective animated past. Her groundbreaking discoveries continue to cast light on the invisible narrative of women’s presence within the first century of the motion picture industry.

Mindy has produced record-breaking global campaigns, creative content, exhibitions and events for a growing list of clients including: The Walt Disney Company, AMPAS/Oscars.org, WNET/American Masters, The Walt Disney Family Museum, Bing Crosby Enterprises, Stage Nine Productions, SiriusXM Radio, and Horipro Entertainment.

In addition to her film expertise, literary efforts and consulting, Mindy is also an award-winning playwright, songwriter, composer, and contributing artist on several internationally acclaimed recordings and published compositions. Mindy teaches cinema history, aesthetics and intercultural film within the Los Angeles area, including a first-of-its-kind course on the history of women in animation, based on her continued ground-breaking research, at CalArts – California Institute of the Arts, in Los Angeles, and Drexel University in Philadelphia, PA.

Lucija Buzančić (Hrvatska) Lucija Bužančić is an animator, illustrator and art historian from Split, Croatia, born on the 15th of November in 1989. She graduated from the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Zagreb in 2011 (Art History and Archaeology). In 2017, she graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts, in the Department of Animated Film. Her graduation film, "Process" (2017.), was screened in numerous international film festivals, and has been listed on VAF New Talents selection for 2018. She is currently working on her new projects with the Zagreb Film production company.

Mandić Miroslav (BiH) Screenwriter / Director has a master’s degree in screenwriting and film directing from Columbia University in New York City. His short film MARRIAGE OF WORKERS won the Grand Prix Golden Dragon at the International Film Festival in Krakow (1985). The feature film LIFE OF WORKERS won the Grand Prix at the 1988 European Film Festival Strasbourg. TOP LIST OF SURREALISTS (1989-90), whose co-writer and director he was, was the most watched TV serie in ex-Yugoslavia. In the period of 1995-2002, he has directed numerous documentaries for Czech television. His feature-length documentary LOVE ON THE BORDER won the Golden Seal for Best Documentary at IFF Munich and the Human Rights Award at the Sarajevo Film Festival.

FILMOGRAPHY
2018 - ACTING, I AM - Feature film - (producer, director, screenplay)
2016 - IN SEARCH OF HOME - Feature documentary - (screenplay)
2015 - WHISKEY AND MILK - Short feature film - (director, screenplay)
2013 - ADRIA BLUES - Feature film - (producer, director, screenplay)
2008 - TRACTOR, LOVE AND ROCK ‘N’ ROLL - Feature film - (screenplay)
2005 - LOVE ON THE BORDER - Feature documentary - (producer, director, screenplay)
1987 - LIFE OF WORKERS - Feature film - (director, screenplay)

OTHER MOVIES
2009 - SEARCHING FOR JOHNNY (screenwriter, director, producer)

Miro Gavran (Hrvatska) is a contemporary Croatian author. His works have been translated into 40 languages, and his books are published in 250 different editions at home and abroad. His dramas and comedies have had more than 400 theatre premiers around the world and have been seen by more than four million theatre-goers. He is probably the only living playwright in the world who has had a festival dedicated solely to his dramas and comedies in five different countries. The festival known as the GavranFest was founded in Slovakia (Trnava), Poland (Krakow), Czeck Republic (Prague), Germany (Augsburg), and Serbia( Belgrade). Gavran earned his degree in Dramaturgy at the Academy of Theatre, Film and Television in Zagreb. He first worked as a dramaturge and artistic director at the famous ITD Theatre in Zagreb (1986 – 1992) . Since January 1993, he has been living and working as a freelance, professional writer. His theatre and prose texts have been included in numerous anthologies in Croatia and around the globe, and his work is studied at universities throughout the world.

He has published ten novels, two collections of short stories and one collection of poems.
Gavran has received over 30 literary awards in Croatia and abroad, including the Central European Time 1999. European Circle.
He is a two-time winner of the Večernji list Award
Four-time winner of the Award for the play "Marin Držić" of the Croatian Ministry of Culture
Award of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts. Award "Ivana Brlić Mažuranić", twice Award "Mato Lovrak".
Order of the order of Danica Croatia with the character of Marko Marulić
Silver medal of the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs of the Slovak Republic
Order of prince Branimir with a necklace of the Republic of Croatia.
Didak Award,
The prestigious European award "Dr. Alois Mock Europe Preis ”.
Golden order of merit in the Republic of Austria
He is member of the Russian Academy of Literature ,the Croatian Academy of Science and the Art. and Slovene Literature and Arts Academy.

Sabrina Begović – Ćorić (BiH) was born in 1986 in Sarajevo. She graduated directing from Sarajevo Academy of Performing Arts. Her documentary SUNČANA DJECA has won several awards including UNICEF Award in 2009 and Sarajevo talent Campus Award... She is a member and one of the founders of the Association Hava Film. She worked as director of series for children “Nema problema”. Her film project UNDERCOVERED, co-directed with Nejra Hulusić, was nominated for Robert Bosh Stiftung Co-production prize and has won Balkan Documentary Network Award. With this same project she participated workshops of Balkan Documentary Network in Sofia, DOCUfest Prizren, Istambul DOCUMENTARIST Film Festival, International DOK Leipzig Co-production Meeting, Nyon Visions Du Reel, Sheffild International Doc Fest and Sarajevo Pravo Ljudski Film Festival.

FILMOGRAPHY
2018 - ROOSTER - Short film - (producer, director)
2017 - EVERYWHERE - Feature-lenght documentary film - (producer), UNDERCOVERED - Feature-lenght documentary film - (editor, producer, director, screenwriter)
2015 - LIONHEART - Short documentary film - (producer, director)
2014 - INTO THE BLUE - Short film - (producer)
2009 - SUNNY CHILDREN - Short documentary film - (director, screenwriter)
2008 - STARICE, kratki film, Akademija scenskih umjetnosti, Sarajevo
2008 - KAKO SAM IZLOŽIO RAD U UMJETNIČKOJ GALERIJI BiH, kratki film, Akademija scenskih umjetnosti, Sarajevo
As a producer, she is known for the films IN BLUE (2014), SHOULD BE A LION (2015), EVERYWHERE (2017), UNDERCOVERED (2017), BEER (2018) and HERETIC (2020).

Ana Nedeljković (Srbija) was born in 1978 in Belgrade. She graduated and received her doctorate in painting at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Belgrade. She is engaged in animated film, visual arts and education in the field of contemporary art.

Her first animated film “Rabbitland” (directed by Ana Nedeljković, Nikola Majdak, 2013) was awarded the Crystal Bear at the Berlinale, screened at over a hundred festivals around the world, and won numerous other awards, including the City of Belgrade Award. Their second joint film “Journeys” (2018) has also been screened at a number of festivals including the Berlinale, Annecy and Sundance, has qualified for an Oscar and has been nominated for an Annie Award in Los Angeles.

She is currently working on a new short animated film "About Money and Happiness" and on the development of a project for the feature animated film "New Rabbitland". Within the "Rabbitland studio" that she founded, they realize commercial animated projects and animated film workshops.

Anne Huynh (France) is a French animation director. Born in 1994. she grew near Paris. Following her passion for storytelling, writing and comics, after one preparatory year in EPSAA in Ivry-sur-Seine, she graduated with a DMA in animation cinema (Diplôme des Métiers d'art) from the Institute Sainte-Genevieve in Paris, where she made her student movie "Ankura". She participated to the first season of En Sortant de L'école (produced by Tant Mieux Prod) for which she adaptated the poem "L'école des beaux-arts" by Jacques Prévert for french national television. Following a red line between her artwork and life she then directed the awards-winning "My Grandpa is Hiding" written by Jean Regnaud and produced by Folimage in 2018, which screened at numerous festivals (Annecy, Clermont-Ferrand, BIAFF, Animatou, PÖFF, GLAS ...), including NAFF (where it won the best art award) in 2020. Since then, she's worked on Ryo Orikasa's new upcoming film "Emergences" (Miyu Productions) and is now preparing new film projects.