The 17th KAFF Awards Presented
This evening, the closing ceremony of the 17th Kecskemét Animation Film Festival took place at the Hírös Agóra Cultural Center in Kecskemét. A total of 96 works competed across 21 categories.
The Grand Prix of the 17th KAFF was awarded to Anna Tőkés’s film The Last Drop. The film follows Kata, a member of the rhythmic gymnastics national team, who is subjected to extreme training methods. As the finals approach, increasing pressure weighs heavily on her.
The award for Best European Feature Film went to the Oscar-nominated Sauvages by Claude Barras, while Jean-Loup Felicioli and Alain Gagnol’s Nina and the Hedgehog’s Secret received a special prize. The Best European TV Series award was given to Gypsy Tales with Roland Tóth-Pócs and László Balajthy accepting the prize for the episode Two Horse Dealer Asses. Augusto Zanovello won Best TV Special for Lola and the Sound Piano.
Pelikan Blue (director: László Csáki) received both the Pannonia Award for Best Feature Film and the Audience Award. Gábor Ulrich’s Capriccio was awarded Best Short Film and the Hungarian Film Critics’ Prize, while the Best TV Series Bálint Ágnes Award went to Péter Bogyó for the episode The Prince and His Three Chums from Hungarian Folk Tales.
The jury named Gyopár Orsolya Búzási’s Bernády Goes to America the Best Applied Animation. Anna Tarcsi’s Escape won Best Student Film. Borbála Fendrik received a special award for her exam film 110 Years of Hungarian Animation. Mirjana Balogh’s Wish You Were Ear was recognized for the most outstanding visual language and also received the Junior Jury’s Best Short Film Award.
In the Best Music category, Bálint Szabó won for Children of the Bird (director: Júlia Tudisco). Csaba Máli and Zsolt Pálfi were honored for Best Animation Work on the film The Quest. Béla Klingl received both the Best Digital Animation award and the Hungarian Film Critics’ Special Prize for Artwork.
The jury for the European feature films competition included Áron Gauder, Kajsa Naess, and György Ráduly. The European television awards were judged by István Gulyás, Tamás Gergely Kucsera, and Michal Minich-Mlcousek. The Hungarian film awards jury comprised Orsolya Sipos, Csilla Szabó, Bella Szederkényi, József Szurcsik, and Zoltán Varga.
The Junior Jury awarded Ervin B. Nagy Best TV Series for the episode The Black Panther from the series Fledglings. The Student Jury chose Vivien Hárshegyi’s Seder Night Fever as Best Hungarian Film and Benoît Chieux’s Sirocco and the Kingdom of the Winds as Best European Film. Aranyhomok Small Regional Development Association Award went to Miklós Weigert’s animation Floki: In Search of the Howl. The Hungarian Academy of Arts’ Southern Great Plain Regional Working Group presented a special prize to László Csáki for Pelikan Blue. The KAFF Organizing Committee bestowed this year’s Lifetime Achievement Award on György Szemadám.
