A new animation festival lands in Nagoya with big plans

Despite its fame as an animation powerhouse, Japan didn't have a festival dedicated to full-length animated films until recently. The change came in 2023 with the founding of the Niigata International Animation Film Festival, which held its third edition in March.

Now, the team that started that festival has created another: Aichi Nagoya International Animation Film Festival, or ANIAFF. Its first edition kicks off in Nagoya on Dec. 12 and runs through Dec. 17 at venues around Nagoya Station.

ANIAFF, which is sponsored by the city of Nagoya and Aichi Prefecture, is centered around a Feature Film Competition section that will screen 11 films from around the world. Entries include recent Japanese films "Jinsei," "100 Meters" and "The Last Blossom," alongside international titles such as "Maya, Give Me a Title," the first animated film by Michel Gondry ("Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind"); "Nimuendaju," which tells the real-life story of an ethnologist who lived among Indigenous Brazilian communities for 40 years; and "Dandelion's Odyssey," a French-Belgian production by Tokyo-born director Momoko Seto in which four dandelion seeds go on an epic journey.