1 week Ago
The Brighton International Animation Festival is set to return for its fourth year. The event will take place from Friday, April 4, to Sunday, April 6, 2025, at Brighton’s Fabrica venue in Duke Street. After gaining BAFTA accreditation last year, the festival has become one of only four BAFTA-qualifying animation festivals in the UK.
This year, the festival will introduce new programmes, Fantastical Worlds and East Asian Panorama, highlighting fresh talent from Japan, China, and other countries. The festival will also feature the New Generation programme, showcasing the best of new graduate talent. An annual LGBTQ+ programme will also be part of the festival.
Brighton International Animation Festival is the only UK animation festival that embraces gay themes. In addition, it is the only UK festival to host an Augmented Reality exhibition alongside the programme. This year, the theme is Heroes, so visitors can expect to see a variety of characters come to life on the walls of Fabrica.
The 2025 prestige jury panel will include Dominic Minns, Izzy Burton, and Comfort Arthur. Mr Minns is a BAFTA-winning co-founder and creative director, who has worked in children's television and is currently directing the first season of Mojo Swaptops after completing the first two seasons of Supertato, both for CBeebies. He also created Tee and Mo, which quickly gained international success.
Ms Burton is an award-winning director and artist, who has worked for studios such as Netflix Animation, Aardman, Cartoon Network, and Golden Wolf. In 2018, after the release of her award-winning short film Via, she was named one of Animation Magazine’s Rising Stars of Animation. Ms Arthur is a British-born Ghanaian award-winning animator, illustrator, and visual artist.
She is the first Ghanaian animator to win the African Academy Movie awards for best animation for her web series I’m Living in Ghana Get Me Out of Here. She has also worked as the episodic director for CBeebies animated preschool show JoJo and Gran Gran in the UK. Tickets can be booked for the three-day programme, which includes New Generation, The Female Gaze, and East Asian Panorama.
The New Generation programme will showcase the best of both UK and international talent, covering topics like the trans experience, sea pollution, and the joys of British summertime. The Female Gaze programme will present a selection of films either presenting the female experience or the world through the eyes of a female director. This includes documentary, narrative, and experimental films from countries including Saudi Arabia, India, and the UK.
The East Asian Panorama programme will feature works from East Asia and its diaspora, including films from China, Taiwan, Korea, and Japan. All films are subtitled, and British Sign Language interpreters will be at all screening events, making it fully accessible for deaf and hard of hearing. For more information, visit the Brighton International Animation Festival website.
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