Hungary, 2004, 35mm, 90', colour, Dolby Surround, in Hungarian with English subtitles. Adult audience.
The kids of the district grew up in constant rivaling and fights, as their Gypsy, Hungarian, Arab, and Chinese families engage in everyday hostility. Yet Richie, the youngest of the Lakatos clan attempts to find a way to pacify the Csorba family, and especially their lovely daughter, Jules. As he soon reveals, the way to peace is through money, and that the only way to make money is to have oil. So the kids take a time-trip to the prehistoric age, and create their own oil reserves right under the district. After their return the exploitation of oil begins, radically changing the stance both in the school and in the general criminal environment of the area. And their sudden success draws some unwanted international attention to the district...
“Director Áron Gauder’s animation is a fresh, hypnotic tangle of caricatured figures and textured layers. The raw, inimitable style complements this rambunctious, rough-and-tumble street story.”
Colin Geddes, Toronto International Film Festival
“The plot of Nyócker! is a modern Romeo and Juliet story from Józsefváros, which is fortunately derailed early on from the good old Verona thread, and places the emphasis on efficient teamwork and survival instead of the literary execution of the young lovers while the love thread is discarded with a post-modern whisk.”
Marci Csillag, Filmkultura
“Fifteen credited artists labored over the distinct animated style, a jerky collage in which cutouts of actors' heads are blended with animated bodies and surroundings; result is crude yet novel.”
Eddie Cockrell, Variety
“Is it Hungary's answer to South Park or to Angela Anaconda? The combination of obscenity-spewing characters and subtly sophisticated, sometimes photo-realistic animation makes The District! very much its own vulgar beast.”
Jason Anderson, Eye Weekly
“The animation is amazingly rich in detail and is simply gorgeous. The film is kinetic, ambitious and stylish.”
Twitch film
“A raw, raunchy and irreverent social satire, the eye-popping adult animation feature Nyocker! manages to take on just about every racial stereotype as well as world leaders, from Dubya to Osama, without ever missing a cool Hungarian hip-hop beat. Added to this goulash is a Romeo and Juliet storyline given a liberated-teen twist, time travel, the oil crisis and an American missile named Freedom aimed at Budapest "terrorists."
Ottawa Xpress
Áron Gauder
After graduating from the Hungarian Academy of Applied Arts (animation department) in 1999 Áron Gauder started his computer animation career at Kosmo Studio. His diploma work, The Helping Soul, was made with film carving technique. Áron has been working on several feature film projects as CG visual effects director. In 2001, he created an interactive animation for the Hungarian National Museum.He is renowned in Hungary for his mixed media animation techniques. His short films include Klaustrofobie (97), Bersecker (98), Wondermill (98), Helping Soul (99). In 2002, he made a documentary short on Iceland and took part in various international animated short film projects in Germany.
Katalin Macskássy, Hungary, 2003, 35mm, 7’, ap/es
The original Gypsy tale is about the desire of the Romani for freedom. In the Gypsy settlement the children listen to the legend and in their imagination the tale comes alive. They »paint« the drab, black and white world with bright colours. They colour reality and the tale makes the bitter present bearable for them.
South Korea, 2003, 35mm, colour, Dolby Surround, 87’, in Korean language with English subtitles. Adult audience.
Life on Earth is on the brink of extinction from pollution and other environmental disasters. In order to survive, humans create a city called Ecoban that organically grows on its own, feeding on the earth's pollution. However, only a select few are allowed to live in the shielded city, leaving many to perish in the wilderness. Conflicts arise after some city officials decide to continually pollute the earth so they can enjoy the prestige of living inside of Ecoban. A feature animation encompassing state-of-the-art 3D and 2D animation.
“Wonderful Days is a mixed bag. On the one hand, the film has the kind of dark, shaded beauty that I feel is truly unique in the history of Korean cinema, animated or otherwise, if its designs are somewhat derivative (They seem to be influenced more by American science fiction, including Star Wars, Tron and Altered States, than by Japanese animation as such). As befitting a dystopian setting, the landscape is constantly drenched in rain, and colors are more often than not different shades of brown and blue-gray, but they are never dull or lifeless: authentic lyricism runs through the whole movie, that unifies its tone into a type of romantic melancholia, mourning the loss of warm, forgiving colors, of white flowers and green grass.“
Kyu Hyun Kim, Korean Movie Reviews
“Five years in the making and created with a team of over 300, we are delighted to present the Australian premiere of the film that has the animation world talking. Drawing strongly on traditional manga style but using cutting edge technology to incorporate 2D, 3D and even miniature modeling into the mix, Wonderful Days is like no other film we have screened.“
Melbourne International Animation Festival
“Dubbed in English, Sky Blue is everything Appleseed is not: mature, character driven, well-developed and haunting. Taking a cue from Fritz Lang's Metropolis, Ecoban is a city that has outlived its usefulness, perpetuated and perverted by a privileged elite to the detriment of the thousands of workers who live below, keeping the city alive.“
G. Allen Johnson, San Francisco Chronicle
“The animation itself is a mixture of 2-D and 3-D computer generated images and real-life high-quality photos, which give the sequences a better illusion of aliveness than what we have grown to expect in i.e. typical American animation (where 3-D animation is used). If we combine the animation with a good (in some respect even overly in-depth) storyline, we get a definitely surprising result.“
Misak, SloCartoon
Director Moon saeng Kim is one of the best-known commercial directors in Korea. His experience has been focused on special effects with animation film for over 15 years. During this period, he has directed more than 200 TV commercials including products like Fanta (Buzz 2-D & 3-D complex animation: awarded gold medal at the 27th Creative Award USA, Korean Broadcasting Commercial Award 1988, Seoul Int'l Creative Animation Festival Award 1996, Pinacle finalist 1997). From 1998, he has worked with Hong Kong-based international advertising agencies such as Oglivy & Mather and JWT. He also serves as a professor at the Kaywon Art School, teaching film design. Wonderful Days is his first feature film.
Estonia, 2005, 35mm, colour, Dolby Surround, 75’, in Estonian language with English subtitles. Adult audience.
Two American secret agents – Frank and Wendy – are sent to the world's hotbed of danger, known as Estonia. Estonia is a silly place, perhaps even sillier than the agents themselves. Frank and Wendy, for whom saving the world is their daily work, achieve both mental and manual feats with the greatest of ease. It appears that nothing can prevent their ultimate victory, but go figure. The axis of evil does not wither and attacks the super-agents from where they can least expect it...
“So what can I tell you about Frank and Wendy? I have to admit that the biggest job in this film is done by Priit Pärn, its his idea, his characters, and even his storyboard. My job was to coordinate the work of animators, edit the film and work with music, sound and actors. It gave great experience to work with a dialogue which I have not done before. The process of the work was quite chaotic we even did not have a complete story while we started to animate, so a bit of that chaos is also reflected in the film. Frank and Wendy was at first done like a TV serial, the idea of making it a feature film came later probably cause we could not sell it to any TV channel. To make the film in circumstances of total freedom was a great fun!”
Kaspar Jancis, one of the directors
“Taking the classic "super-agent-saving-the-world" genre, throwing in a strong undercurrent of east-meets-west subthemes, vivid colours, that outstanding and unique hand drown styling that only the Estonians can come up with and a few other bits that we need a "special doctor" to help us understand, Frank and Wendy will take your breath away.“
London International Animation Film Festival
“It may make no sense, but it’s totally consistent in the way it doesn’t make sense.”
Taylor Jessen, Animation World Magazine
Priit Pärn
Graduated from the Department of Biology of University of Tartu in 1970. Worked at the Botanical Garden of Tallinn as a plant ecologist from 1970 to 1976. Worked as an art director and animated film director at the Joonisfilm animated film department of Tallinnfilm Studio since 1976. Works at Eesti Joonisfilm Studio since 1994. Has been active as a caricaturist and illustrator since the end of the 1960's. He has done more and more work as a freelance graphic artist since the early 1980's. Pärn has had over 30 solo exhibitions over the past 12 years in various European countries and Canada. Pärn has also worked as a teacher over the past 10 years. He has taught at film schools in Finland, Norway, Germany, Switzerland, Spain, Belgium, Holland and England. Pärn is the artistic director of the animation department of the Turku School of Art and Media in Finland since 1994. Pärn has made 10 animated films of duration up to 30 minutes as well as a host of short films, commercials and so on.
Kaspar Jancis
He has been part of the creative core of several rock groups, written song lyrics, made arrangements and created tunes. He enrolled at the Tallinn Pedagogical University in 1996. He completed his first films at that school - the silent film Dr. Maisarve and the Matshalka Case (1996) and the cutout puppet film Flight of the Little White Helicopter (1996), which was screened at rock concerts and also on television. He transferred from the Pedagogical University to the Turku Arts and Media School in Finland in 1997 to study animation under the guidance of Priit Pärn. He made his debut film Romance (1999) in Turku, and it has participated in several international film festivals.
Ülo Pikkov
Graduated from the Turku School of Art and Media (Finland) in 1998. His caricatures, comics and illustrations have been published in the press.
Priit Tender
Graduated as an art teacher from the Tallinn Pedagogical University in 1995. His first job was at Eesti Joonisfilm Studio, where he worked as a co-artist on the film 1895 (1995) by Priit Pärn and Janno Põldma. The animated film Gravitation was his directorial debut in 1996.
