PROGRAM

Swati Agarwal is an animation filmmaker and Designer. Her interest in films and urge to share her knowledge and experience with students brought her to the IDC, School of Design, Indian Institute of Technology, IIT Bombay, as an Assistant Professor. She completed her M.Des in Animation in 2012 and has worked at IDC as a Design Research Associate on different projects for the Government of India.
She has also documented the history of Indian Animation and interviewed some veteran Indian Animators.Her two claymation films, ‘Gajar Ka Halwa’ and ‘Lakshmi Aayi Hai’, fetched many national and international awards. Swati has the experience of working with the renowned Oscar-winning Animator Adam Wrywas on a short claymation film ‘Tokri’. Apart from making her films, she takes clay design workshops for all age groups in different parts of India

Jocelyn Charles studied applied arts at École Boulle, Estienne, and later Gobelins, where he honed his drawing skills and deepened his expertise in animation. As a director of music videos (The Weeknd, L’Impératrice), short films, and an illustrator, he crafts a unique visual universe. Since 2020, he has been working with Remembers, a studio founded by Félix de Givry and Ugo Bienvenu, a creative space where animation, illustration, and cinema intersect.

She loved painting and playing with video cameras since childhood, so she found the fun in animation.
Her video arts and painting in a variety of materials are inspired by everyday events.
Her main works are See ya Mr.Banno! which is based on vague and mysterious memories from her childhood, Zdravstvuite! depicting a day with a stranger she met in a seaside town, A Snowflake into the Night adapted from a poem by contemporary artist Tomoko Konoike, and the music video ShalaBonBon co-produced with musician BonnouShimizu.Her current short In the Big Yard Inside the Teeny-Weeny Pocket/Mini-Mini-Pokke no Okina Niwa de premieres in 75th Locarno Film Festival in Pardi di domani section. The film also won the Grand Prize at Tokyo TDC Awards 2023.She is currently illustrating and creating comics for the serialized project Hello Witches!! – With Witches of the 21st Century, published on Kasama Shoin’s note platform.

Gáti Ráhel is a Hungarian animation film director born in 1994. She graduated with a Master of Arts degree from the Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design. Over the years, she has directed several short films and participated in numerous group exhibitions showcasing her paintings and performances. Since 2018, she has also been working as a tattoo artist. She is currently awaiting the festival premiere of her graduation film About the Line.

John W. Lustig is a filmmaker and animator based in Queens, NY. After studying film at NYU Tisch School of the Arts, he began making independent animated short films that have screened at dozens of film festivals across the world and won multiple awards. He is currently writing his next animated short film.

Renaud Hallée is based in Montreal. His music-driven short films have been selected at Annecy International Film Festival, Ottawa International Film Festival, SXSW Film Festival and TIFF.

Alice Eça Guimarães has worked both in advertising and animated films for over a decade. Her films have received prestigious awards, including the Sophia Award for Best Portuguese Short Film.
She is currently developing a stop-motion and pixilation short film titled “Roupa Velha” and an animated series about the Portuguese dictatorship called “A Bem da Nação.”

Winston Hacking is a moving image artist originally from Peterborough, Ontario. His work often combines found footage, collage, compositing, and tactile animation. Hacking's work is economical, both in terms of his use of found materials and the techniques used. Despite this thrifty approach, his works are daedal due to his ability to transform the mundane into the sublime through creative re-contextualization.
His films have been shown at festivals for experimental animation, including Videoex (Zurich), the Lausanne Underground Film Festival, EXiS (Seoul), and the Ottawa International Animation Festival, where he served as a member of the Official Competition Jury in 2025. His work has also been presented in microcinema and institutional contexts, including Other Cinema (San Francisco), RPM at Harvard CAMLab, UnArchive Found Footage Fest (Rome), Pleasure Dome (Toronto), Belvedere 21 (Vienna), and the Rochester Museum of Fine Arts.
Hacking’s methodology has been documented in Found Footage Magazine and the Sternberg Press volume Frame-by-Frame Stop Motion. He has been invited to present his research and process at RISD and CalArts, and he continues to share his findings through artist-led workshops and a Substack documenting his creative process. A past resident of the Toronto Animated Image Society, he also creates limited-edition risograph zines, including No Sweat!, Fog Nozzle, and A Dopey Photo Slop, which are distributed by Colour Code Printing.

Iva Tokmakchieva graduated BA in Animation at the New Bulgarian University in 2019. Her graduation film “Let’s meet yesterday” was selected at numerous international and national festivals and was awarded with several prizes, including ASIFA Student Award in 2020. Since then Iva is part of Compote Collective and currently completed her debut film “Balconada”.

Karolina Walas works in animation, graphic design, and illustration. She grew up in Dobczyce, a small town by a lake. She graduated from the Faculty of Graphic Arts at the Jan Matejko Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków in 2025, defending her master's degree with the animated film "Perła pod Słońce".
She has recently took part in the "Korona i Państwo" (Crown and State) - an animation created to commemorate the 1000th anniversary of the Crown of Poland and projected onto the walls of Wawel Castle.