Open Air Screening
International Animation Day
DETAILS
Description
International Animation Day is an annual global celebration launched by the International Animated Film Association (ASIFA) to commemorate the first public screening of animated films in 1892. Each year, screenings and events take place worldwide to celebrate animation as an art form, give visibility to its creators and connect animation communities across borders.
For its 2026 celebration in Cyprus, the WIP Festival and the Cyprus Animation Association come together to present a special programme of animated works.
The programme emerged from a joint open call inviting animators, artists, filmmakers and creators to submit works that engage with or resonate with the WIP 2026 theme, FLOWS. From these submissions, a selection of animations brings together different approaches to movement, exchange, transformation and connection, while exploring the evolving relationship between art and technology.
The works reflect on how ideas, people, information, ecologies and technologies circulate and interact across physical and digital environments.
The open air screening brings animation into the city and connects Nicosia to the wider international network of events marking International Animation Day.
Screenings
Films play continuously
Land of No Man
Directors: Muling Tzai, Olivia Lin
Country: Taiwan, United States
Length (mm:ss): 3:51
Description: A loner capybara is questioned by passer-by animals: aren’t you lonely?
The Granny
Director: Kalina Dimitrova
Country: Bulgaria
Length (mm:ss): 4:33
Description: This is a modern Balkan story about the eternal Woman, the Woman with an unbreakable spirit, a big heart, an amazing turbo shopping trolley and the best turshia – the Granny. On the other hand, this is a story about the modern woman who sometimes forgets about grannies, sometimes is annoyed by their preoccupation, but who manages to find a common ground with the Granny. A film about angry women’s power, which is the only power capable of fighting the Balkan administration.
Pink Mountain
Director: Thomas Kunstler
Country: Greece
Length (mm:ss): 8:25
Description: What can a humble florist in love do to win the heart of a Pasha’s bride? An ancient Ottoman fairy tale tells the story of a forbidden love, made of patience, silence and the help of a heron.
GET A JOB !!!!!
Director: Sofia Bordiuzhan
Country: Cyprus
Length (mm:ss): 1:29
Description: Artistic girl goes on a job interview.
Kabuki
Director: Tiago Minamisawa
Country: Brazil
Length (mm:ss): 14:37
Description: Kabuki lives in a male body that she does not recognize. Without identity she awakens the Soul. In the impermanence of the material body, she Transcends.
Outshine
Director: Eliza Dorothy Russell Keating
Country: Taiwan
Length (mm:ss): 4:00
Description: One day, the light in one lighthouse burns out. When the keeper replaces it with an even brighter bulb, it sparks the competitive spirit of the keeper across the water. The two soon become entangled in an absurd duel of increasingly outrageous lighting upgrades. As their one-upmanship escalates, they seemingly forget their original responsibilities as lighthouse keepers…
Tighrist Threads of exile
Director: Samia Dzaïr
Country: France
Length (mm:ss): 3:00
Description: Using textile as a language of resistance, an artist explores her family’s displacement from Bouira to Roubaix, revealing how exile reshapes labor, identity, and belonging.
How A River Is Born
Director: Luma Flôres
Country: Brazil
Length (mm:ss): 8:33
Description: Ayla wakes up in a mountainous landscape, surrounded only by vegetation and a river. Driven by curiosity and a desire to get to know the place, she goes on a journey of discovery and diving. As she discovers where she is, she also discovers herself.
The Synthetic Age
Director: Dimitris Armenakis
Country: Greece
Length (mm:ss): 7:39
Description: In a city where people consume cartoons, a dog reconciles with its old friends, and together, they try to escape from humans.
Umbraven
Director: Pia Christ
Country: Germany
Length (mm:ss): 4:53
Description: Almost every night, Emma sits by her window, gazing out at the empty, diseased streets of her hometown. One evening, a strange birdlike figure appears, a presence she has seen many times before, but never this close. What begins as a fleeting encounter slowly unfolds into a quiet and unsettling moment that brings a fragile sense of wonder back into her bleak world. Set in an early 18th century English town marked by illness and decay, Umbraven is a dark fantasy that explores loneliness, mortality, and the subtle persistence of hope, seen through the eyes of a child.
How smart are crows?
Director: Irida Zhonga
Country: Greece
Length (mm:ss): 4:49
Description: In one of Aesop’s fables, a crow is searching for water. It spies a pitcher— but the water inside is beyond its reach. So, the crow begins dropping in pebbles. One-by-one, they displace the water, and the crow quenches its thirst. This is just one of many fascinating displays of intelligence from corvids. Katharina Brecht digs into what makes this bold, brainy family of songbirds so smart.