International Feature Film Competition Lineup Announced!
67 Films from 33 Countries and Regions—Surpassing the Inaugural Edition!
Nine Highly Anticipated Films Confirmed for Screening, Including “CHERRY AND VIRGIN” and “A NEW DAWN!”
The second edition of the International Feature Film Competition received 67 submissions from 33 countries and regions around the world, a significant increase from the inaugural edition, which received 45 films from 29 countries.
This year’s submissions reflect an even greater diversity of expression, creative approaches, and regions. A wide range of production techniques was represented, from hand-drawn animation and stop-motion to CG and works incorporating AI. With such a broad spectrum of films coming together, ANIAFF offers a vivid snapshot of how animation is evolving around the world.
From the many outstanding submissions, nine films were selected for the competition, representing 12 countries, including co-productions. Notably, half of this year’s selected films are from Asia, making the lineup one that reflects the growing momentum of animation across the region. Another distinctive feature of this year’s competition is that, despite the increase in submissions using new technologies such as AI, many of the films selected by the committee employ traditional hand-drawn techniques.
Many of the selected filmmakers are also expected to visit Japan during the festival. We look forward to ANIAFF becoming a lively meeting place where audiences in Japan can connect with filmmakers from Japan and around the world.
International Feature Film Competition Lineup
“Ana, en passant”
Director: Fernanda Salgado / Brazil, Portugal, France
After the death of her grandmother, Ana, a young
black French-Brazilian woman, finds herself adrift in
Paris, the city where she was born and has always lived,
increasingly isolating herself in her grief.
Following clues left by her grandmother, she travels to
Belo Horizonte, Brazil, where she finds Alice, who is
renting her grandmother’s apartment. In deciphering
the affective cartography of the city, its memories, and
ancestral connections, Ana and Alice unravel what it
means to become who they are.
“CHERRY AND VIRGIN”
Director: Masanao Kawajiri / Japan
This “universal love story,” told through the lens of modern subculture, follows an adult manga artist who continues to struggle creatively and a fujoshi who, having given up on her dream of becoming a professional writer, feels uncomfortable around real men. The two—both in their early 30s and having never experienced a real romantic relationship—meet by chance and, while feeling bewildered, gradually come to understand the “pain” and “tenderness” of living in connection with others.
Produced using “rotoscoping”—a technique that animates over live-action footage—the series goes beyond the boundaries of traditional animation. While rooted in animation, it incorporates elements of live-action and manga, allowing the diverse designs and worldviews of the creators involved to coexist within a single scene, resulting in a uniquely original visual style that is one of the series’ key attractions.
©2027 TOEI VIDEO
“Julián”
Director: Louise Bagnall, Guillaume Lorin, Mark Mullery / Ireland / Luxembourg / Canada / Denmark
Wide-eyed Julián is about to spend the summer with a grandmother he barely knows. He is amazed to discover her treasure-trove apartment, his own Caribbean heritage and the lively Brooklyn community he issurrounded by.
But mostsurprising of all,Julián discoversthat he is, in fact, a mermaid!
“Light Pillar”
Director: Xu Zao / China
A once-thriving film studio faces bankruptcy. The enormous compound, with structures ranging from the Great Sphinx of Giza to the Forbidden City, is now completely covered in snow, stripped of its former glory.
Zha, a lonely janitor, tends to this forgotten place, with only a former cat actor for company.
Running out of money, the studio owner gives him a VR headset as compensation. Zha is immediately drawn into the virtual world and embarks on a romantic journey with a female player. After a few dates, she invites him on a trip to the Moon.
Zha works extra hours to pay for his share of the travel expenses, but when he arrives at the travel center, he finds out that his ticket is invalid…
Just as the studio town is about to close, a film crew arrives to shoot an alien invasion movie, with the final showdown filmed as the studio’s actual destruction.
On the day of filming, Zha decides to stay behind and disappear with his world.
“Magic Atlas”
Director: Sun Xun / Singapore
A magician arrives in the reclusive coal empire — Luocha, triggering widespread panic in a society already simmering beneath a fragile peace. After being arrested, he encounters an orphan named Xiao Zhi in prison. Amid the Mimeng Festival of collective amnesia, the magician secretly passes Magic Atlas to Xiao Zhi before being burned at the stake.
In the ensuing chaos, the child is cast into Prophecy lake. This lake, a portal through time and space, unexpectedly transports Xiao Zhi to the sacred training ground of Jinta Ling.
There, under his master’s guidance, Xiao Zhi discovers he shares the same soul as the magician and that they can reunite through the energy of fire, thus beginning a shared journey through higher-dimen-sional realms.
“A NEW DAWN”
Director: Yoshitoshi Shinomiya / JAPAN／FRANCE
The long-established Obinata Fireworks Factory faces eviction due to town redevelopment. Keitaro Obinata (Riku Hagiwara), who grew up there, struggles alone to complete the phantom fireworks in place of his vanished father.
On the last day of summer, his childhood friend Kaoru (Kotone Furukawa), who lives in Tokyo, returns home. Keitaro’s older brother Sentaro, who works at the city hall, informs them the eviction deadline is tomorrow. The three reunite for the first time in four years. Clashing as if trying to reclaim lost time and bonds, they devise a surprising plan involving completing and launching the fireworks—but…
Hope entrusted to the phantom fireworks, and the key held by “Hanarokusho”
As sparks illuminate the night and “A NEW DAWN” approaches, what futures will Keitaro and the others grasp?
©2025 A NEW DAWN Film Partners
“The Orbit of Minor Satellites”
Director: Chris Sullivan / United States, Japan
The Orbit of Minor Satellites, is an animated / live action feature film, with hand drawn animation, digitally composited over painted backgrounds, models, and live action actors .
This Psychiatrist and patient story is a portrait of the complexities of professional intimacy in the lives of doctors, psychologists, teachers, where situational bonds, are created and broken in serial fashion. Our main characters are Derwood Richards, psychiatrist, and Rosemary Hamm, his patient. The narrative unfolds during the period of healing, where Rosemary is ready to leave the care of her doctor, and both are negotiating this triumph, and this loss.
The film is a conversation between two parallel narratives, The Psychiatrists office, and a Soviet / American Space station, an hallucinatory world of The patient Rosemary’s mind.
As in The Orbit of Minor Satellites, we all in orbit around a larger celestial body of some kind. An emotional parent, an over achieving sister, or brother, a history, a place, and perhaps the most common, the strange unreachable person that we hoped we would be, In orbit around our potential selves, at some point we escape the gravity of that planet, and drift into outer space either in relief or permanent longing.
“Son of a Bitch”
Director: Erica Maradona, Tania Anaya, Otto Guerra, Sávio Leite / Brazil
In the small village of Veredas, stands “Casa Rosa”, a famous brothel run by Ismael’s mother. Because of this, he is known as the “Son of a Bitch”.
Determined to find the father he has never met, Ismael leaves Veredas alongside his dog, Bacalhau. But through the way, he finds himself facing situations that stubbornly try to pull him back to the fate he is trying to escape.
“Zsazsa Zaturnnah”
Director: Avid Liongoren / Philippines
Ada is a shy gay hairdresser living in a small town in the Philippines. After many heartbreaks over many years, he had committed himself to a simple and single life.
But when a magical stone from outer space transforms him into a flamboyant female superhero, Ada is forced to face great challenges: from fighting zombies to stopping invading Amazonistas from Planet X, to the even more difficult task of risking his heart to love again.