“Robot Dreams” by Pablo Berger wins the European Film Award for best animated film

Pablo Berger has gained huge support in the film awards season with his animated film “Robot Dreams”, which won the award for Best Animated Film at the European Film Awards. Four of the last eight films to receive this honor have also earned Oscar nominations for Best Animated Feature.

The film is based on the graphic novel of the same name by Sara Varon and presents a lively and colorful version of 80s New York City, filled with music. In the film, a dog tired of his loneliness builds a robot companion. The two quickly become close friends before uncontrollable circumstances tear them apart, forcing them to dream of their next meeting.

“Robot Dreams” won the Contrechamp competition in Annecy, earned a special jury prize at the Animation is Film festival, and won the audience prize at Bucheon. In Spain, the film beat off competition from live-action films to win Best Film at Sitges and is one of the favorites to win the Goya Award for Best Animated Film, for which it is also nominated for Best adapted screenplay, best soundtrack and best editing.

Despite great international success, “Robot Dreams” still has a low profile in the United States. However, this year it was purchased at the Cannes film festival by independent distribution company Neon, which plans to release the film widely by 2024.

The nominees for this year's European Film Award for Best Animated Film were:
– “A Greyhound of a Girl”, Enzo d'Alò (Luxembourg, Italy, Ireland, United Kingdom, Latvia, Estonia, Germany)
– “Chicken for Linda!”, Chiara Malta and Sébastien Laudenbach (France, Italy)
– “Robot Dreams”, Pablo Berger (Spain, France)
– “The Amazing Maurice”, Toby Genkel (Germany, UK)
– “White Plastic Sky”, Tibor Bánóczkia and Sarolta Szabó (Hungary, Slovakia)

The European Film Award for best short film, which includes both live-action and animated titles, went to the machinima film “Hardly Working,” created by a team of artists at the Austrian company Total Refusal, including Susanna Flock, Robin Klengel, Leonhard Müllner and Michael Stumpf.

The film uses footage from the popular video game “Red Dead Redemption 2” to create a fly-on-the-wall documentary style of the lives of the non-game characters, creating a depressive analogy of life as a worker in a capitalist system. It is exceptionally rare for machinima films, defined as animated cinema in a real-time 3D virtual environment, to be recognized by major awards ceremonies.

The nominees for this year's European Film Award for Best Short Film were:
– “27”, Flóra Anna Buda (France, Hungary)
– “Aqueronte”, Manuel Muñoz Rivas (Spain)
– “Daydreaming So Vividly About our Spanish Holidays (La Herida Luminosa)”, Christian Avilés (Spain)
– “Flores del Otro Patio”, Jorge Cadena (Switzerland, Colombia)
– “Hardly Working”, Total Refusal: Susanna Flock, Robin Klengel, Leonhard Müllner and Michael Stumpf (Austria)

The European Visual Effects Award went to Félix Bergés and Laura Pedro for their work on JA Bayona's “Society of the Snow,” which tells the story of a plane that crashes in the Andes in 1972.



Source: www.cartoonbrew.com