2019 TIAF Short Film Competition Call for Entries

Best Children’s Short Film” added and a total cash prizes of 1.2 m Taiwan dollars

The TIAF, the most eagerly anticipated annual event in Taichung, is entering its fifth year in 2019! The call for entries to the most important category, “Short Film Competition”, is open from now until June 30^th. The total cash prizes reach up to 1.2 million Taiwan dollars, which not only entices filmmakers around the world to participate but encourage the Taiwanese animation directors to present their most unique work. In addition, “Best Children’s Short Film” is added this year; during the film festival, the audiences would vote for their most favourite children’s short film to be the winner. It is believed that this event will attract attention from more people, adults and children alike, raising their interest in animation.

The TIAF is not only the biggest animation festival in Taiwan but also the only international “city animation film festival”. Since it was founded in 2015, it has been annually held in October in Taichung. After years’ effort put by the festival team, the TIAF has established a great reputation known to the animators around the world and received attention from filmmakers and production companies.

As in previous years, the 2019 TIAF is run by the Taichung Film Development Foundation under the supervision of the Information Bureau of the Taichung City Government. The Short Film Competition, the most important category, aims to discover the new animation talents globally and has become the award-winning indicator of the outstanding Taiwanese animations. Same as in the last year, there are Short Film Competition, Student Short Film Competition, Taiwanese Short Film Competition and Taiwanese Student Short Film Competition. The top prize winner will be awarded half a million Taiwan dollars and an animation software exclusively sponsored by the TVPaint Développement in the hope of encouraging the winner to continue making new films. Moreover, in order to encourage more local residents to participate in the festival, the category of Best Children’s Short Film is added this year, allowing the parents to take their children to the screenings and to vote for Best Children’s Short Film.

All the TIAF award-winning films are outstanding works which demonstrate great creativity. For example, The Fall, the top prize winner in the International Short Film Competition, is an experimental, innovative and daring film, which overthrows the established visual language of animation and won countless awards across the world and was shown at all the major international animation film festivals. Last year, in the category of Taiwanese Short Film Competition, Where Am I Going and {Si So Mi}, fought neck and neck and in the end, the jury decided to let them share the top prize. Later in the year, both of the films were nominated Best Animation Short Film at the Golden Horse Awards, and Where Am I Going, a puppet animation expressed in a unique aesthetics, became the winner. Where Am I Going went on to winning Best Animation, Best Production Design and Best Sound Design at the Golden Harvest Awards earlier this year. These records show that the TIAF has become an indicator of the Taiwanese short  animation and plays an important role in representing the Taiwanese animation in the international animation industry. Furthermore, it takes up the mission of discovering the new animation talent.

There are more and more brilliant Taiwanese animators making themselves seen with their works. Among the 100 shorts competed at the 2018 TIAF, 26 were Taiwanese, which demonstrated the vibrant creative energy of the Taiwanese animators. More importantly, these works were highly praised by the judges. In 2018, the number of filmmakers from Taiwan and abroad participating in the TIAF broke the records, and amongst them were several heavy-weight Taiwanese directors, internationally renowned masters and the rising new talents. They dramatically increase the chance for Taiwanese animations to be seen around the globe. This once again proves that the TIAF has secured a foothold in animation and collaborated closely with international short film exhibition platforms. Anyone who would like to see the latest, the most unique and the richest animation programme should never miss the 2019 TIAF in October.

The call for the 2019 TIAF entries are now open until June 30^th (Monday). In order to support the environmental protection, only online submissions are accepted. For further details on the competition regulations and submission, please submit here. The nominations are scheduled to be published on the TIAF official website before July 31^st 2019.