Lili takes the prize

The animation film Lili directed by Estonian Riho Unt won the KROK International Animated Films Festival’s Grand Prix with the $5,000 award. The opening ceremony of the cinema forum was held in Sevastopol’s Moscow Cinema.

This year animators from 37 countries participated in KROK. They traveled along the route Kyiv-Zaporizhia-Kherson-Sevastopol-Odesa onboard the Zirka Dnipra motor ship. According to Serhii Trymbach, the head of jury, a cinema critic, and head of Ukraine’s National Union of Filmmakers, representatives of 13 countries became the laureates of the festival. Five awards went to Russian animators, while their colleagues from Great Britain, the US, the Netherlands, and Estonia collected two diplomas per country.

Directors from Poland, Germany, Portugal, France, South Africa, Hungary, Italy, and Ukraine also won nominations. In particular, the Ukrainian director Adrian Sakhaltuiev won in the Applied and Recommended Animated Films nomination for his movie Vova is Cool. The jury’s special Best Debut Prize went to the movie The Swimming Lesson (directed by Danny de Vent, Netherlands). The Best Children’s Film Award went to the film Pudia directed by Russian Sonia Kravtsova. The work Inborn Circumstances directed by Estonian Rao Heidmets was received the Oleksandr Tatarsky Prize in the Top Class nomination.