Operation «Animation»

Animation can do what no other form of cinema can — depict absolutely anything. It shatters reality into pieces, turns it inside out, and reveals the world in ways we’ve never seen before — yet instantly recognise.

An Icelandic cow swims across a fjord on her own, an electricity meter bares its teeth and threatens to bite, and the Motherland Monument grotesquely steps through a doorway in the form of an angel.

Operation Animation presents seven new works by contemporary Ukrainian animators. Among them are this year’s Oscar contender — Anastasiia Falileieva’s haunting diary I Died in Irpin; the psychedelic Kyiv Cake by urban-surrealism master Mykyta Lyskov; Mermaid -Cow Saga — an Icelandic tale by Sashko Danylenko about escaping death and finding new life; the anti-stress odyssey Off Time by Nata Metlukh; and the grotesque horror short Spooky Loops by Stas Santimov.

The selection also includes Dreamtracks, a window-seat meditation on life passing by from a train, created by Margaryta Winkler, and Iryna Lytvynova’s self-reflective Life In Between, about making art during wartime — a film awarded at the LINOLEUM festival.

All films in the program were created after the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion. Most were produced abroad or in international co-production. The very existence of such Ukrainian animation today is proof of resilience — and a unique act of creative resistance.