Aug 19th (Wed) 17:30～ @JMS ASTER PLAZA Grand Hall
The Short Film Competition is open to short animated works from around the world with a running time of 30 minutes or less. In addition to the Grand Prix for Short Film, an international jury will present four specific awards tailored to the genre of the films: the "Contemporary Tale" Award, the "A Slice of Society" Award, the "Fictive World" Award, and the "Visual Poetry" Award. The Grand Prix-winning film will gain eligibility to compete in the Short Animated Film category of the Academy Awards. At HAS 2026, we are pleased to introduce a total of 40 officially selected short films across four distinct programs.
Nata Metlukh, Shayna Strype, Peter Millard, Wei Keong Tan, Yuqing Liu
MC: Ryo Orikasa
A data engineer rushes through life, believing multitasking saves time—but it only creates chaos. Despite his strict control over time, nothing gets done: his home is a mess, work overflows, and breakfast is always burnt. He discovers joy in life only when time breaks apart.
Nata Metlukh is a Ukrainian-American animation artist based in California. She visualizes abstract concepts through metaphor and finds quiet absurdity in everyday life. Her work is driven by form, color, and deadpan logic, with humor that makes the familiar feel strange. Nata’s films have received several awards at international animation festivals.
Animated with traditional techniques on 16mm film, a young girl seeks solace in the imagined care of her stuffed snowman.
Shayna Strype is a New York based artist working in animation, film, and puppetry performance. Her films have screened internationally including at Slamdance, Ann Arbor Film Festival, Palm Springs ShortFest, and Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona. They have received awards at Brooklyn Film Festival, Thomas Edison Film Festival, and Athens International Film + Video Festival, among others. Her work has been supported by The Jim Henson Foundation, Mono No Aware Cinema Arts Non-Profit, Dixon Place Theater, Mass MoCA's Assets for Artists, and the SVA Art Practice residency. She is a 2026 MacDowell Fellow.
On a bus, a passenger reclines their seat too far back. This small gesture shifts the balance of the space. Around visible and invisible boundaries, personal and collective spaces expand and contract, leading everyone on board in an unexpected direction.
Seun Yee is an animation filmmaker whose practice moves between the abstract and the figurative, exploring visual storytelling through hand-crafted 2D techniques. She graduated from the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague in 2016 and is currently based in Korea.
Mia has spent her whole life freediving, fishing and gliding through seaweed and rocks. Time has passed, tracing its lines on her body, and shaping the landscapes around her. Loved ones have vanished. Tonight, Mia remembers.
Born in 1978, in France
Sandra Desmazieres studied at Ecole Duperre, (Ecole Nationale Superieure des Arts Appliques), then at ENSAD, Ecole Nationale des Arts Decoratifs in Paris, where she discovered animation. Her graduation film, “Sans queue ni tete”, won the 2003 Cartoon d’or. She then directed “Le The de l’Oubli” and “Bao”, produced by Les Films de l’Arlequin and Arte. In 2021, she directed “Flowing Home”, produced by Les Films de l’Arlequin, the ONF and France 3, shortlisted for the Cesar and Oscar awards in 2022. During and between her film projects, Sandra is also an illustrator a colorist.
yellow bellow can you get me to orange so i can see green but that won't do because i still need to smell blue and that can't be too far from red.
Peter Millard is from the Malvern Hills. He has made several animated short films that have been screened and awarded at short film festivals all around the world which have included several retrospectives. Alongside his animation work he has made several sculpture and sound pieces that have been exhibited in galleries internationally.
My granddad was a magician, and part time butcher. He also kept pet cockatoos.
I remember one day going over to his house way out west to visit him. He was in the garage, cutting up frozen beef shanks on his circular saw. The saw was buzzing and screeching and he was getting covered in a fine powder of frozen beef shavings. Seeing me hovering at the door, he flicked off the saw, wiped the beef frosting from his thick rimmed glasses and beckoned me to come over.
From the front pocket of his greasy white apron, he pulled out a little toy guillotine, sparkling and black, old and worn. “Put your finger in there” he said. I was nervous, but my granddad always had cool junk scattered around the place, like the bowling balls with blue pirate ships on them, the cockatoos that could swear and count to ten, the pile of vintage playboy magazines I had located under a box of smelly old paint thinner.
“Ok” I said. I slipped my finger into the dark wooden hole in the base of the rickety little execution machine. He pulled up on the wobbly handle attached to the angled blade. I looked over at the frozen beef shank, stuck deep into the circular saw. He gave me a wink, and slammed his hand down on the blade.
Areito Echevarria is an Academy Award winning artist and researcher, approaching storytelling through the lens of computation and design. He is the co-writer / director of the Cristal Award winning VR narrative film experience Minimum Mass. He is an Annecy Festival Artist in Residence and Sundance New Frontiers Fellow.
Areito has previously had a long career in feature film VFX, supervising technical animation in films such as Avatar, the Hobbit, and Planet of the Apes.
As a Senior Lecturer at Victoria University of Wellington Te Herenga Waka, Areito’s research explores storytelling through the lens of computation and design.
One of only a handful of Puerto Rican New Zealanders on the planet, Areito’s work examines themes of identity, love, loss, and the monsters that dwell inside us.
In a queer utopia, two couples sit in conversation at a restaurant, waiting for service that will never arrive. As hunger grows, they talk about time and happiness. Not wanting to wait forever, they decide to leave.
Born in Singapore, Wei Keong Tan studied animation at the island city-state’s Nanyang Technological University. In his films he animates fantasy worlds in which he explores his gay identity through personal storytelling. His film, Kingdom, has been selected at the Berlinale Shorts in 2019. He is currently developing his first feature film.
An abstract interpretation of Chopin's Etude Opus 10 no. 12. The film was made without any planning by improvising on the pinscreen.
Diek Grobler is a multi-disciplinary artist and has been working with animation for 24 years. His films has travelled extensively on the international festival circuit since 2006. His personal work has focused on animated poetry-film for more than a decade. Diek Grobler’s animation is hand-crafted: His techniques include hand drawn animation, kinestatic animation, cut-out and pinscreen animation. He lives and works in Pretoria, South Africa.
States of Matter is an experimental strata-cut animation crafted entirely from wax and paper. The film is the outcome of the director's creative explorations during his postgraduate studies, in which he shaped solid sculptures out of liquid wax, only to systematically break them down and reanimate them. The resulting highly magnified macro animations are complemented by a tactile soundscape highlighting the materials' intricate details, textures, and movements.
Marvin is an experimental animator from Germany. Influenced and inspired during his undergraduate creative media studies in Hong Kong, he pursued a master’s degree in animation in the Netherlands, where he recently graduated. During this, he focused on exploring and expanding the field of strata-cut animation.
In his artistic practice, he embarks on exploratory journeys, often without predetermined destinations. While satisfying his own curiosity, the resulting work extends an invitation to viewers to join and linger in these explorations. Focussing on experimental moving images, his goal is to craft films that elevate one's perception, gently massage the mind, and provide a space for contemplation and interpretation, free from imposed narratives.
The Tale of the Peony is an AI-generated experimental short film inspired by the life of the late Tang poet Yu Xuanji. After entering a Taoist convent, she buries a lock of her hair in the courtyard, and the peony gradually takes on an eerie crimson hue. A young scholar’s visit triggers a strange calamity, while rumors spread rapidly and blame falls on Yu Xuanji. Blending Chinese zhiguai tales, surreal visual style, and paper-sculpture aesthetics, the film portrays women’s fate under structural oppression.
Jintao Sun is an artist and researcher working at the intersection of generative media, craft, and visual culture. She holds a BA in Craft Art and an MFA in Art and Design from Tsinghua University. Her practice explores how AI and computational systems reinterpret traditional material processes into new forms of digital imagery and moving image. She works with generative models to develop process-driven visual languages that merge cultural motifs with algorithmic aesthetics. Her work has been exhibited in national and international contexts, and her AI projects have gained over 1.5 million views online. She has collaborated with platforms such as MidJourney and Lovart, engaging with the evolving relationship between technology, authorship, and visual culture.
Yuqing Liu is a filmmaker and PhD candidate at the University of Hong Kong, affiliated with the eXtended Humanities VR + AR Research Lab. She holds a BA in Chinese Literature, a BFA in Art Theory, and an MA in Theory of Literature and Art from Peking University. Her work focuses on film, virtual reality, and immersive media, with an interest in affect and embodied experience. She is a young poet with published work, and has also published academic research in film and cultural studies. Her interdisciplinary projects have been presented at venues including SIGGRAPH Asia. She is also active as a content creator, with an interest in the cultural and industrial dimensions of digital media.