This Year’s International Feature Film Competition Jury Announced!
Rupert Bottenberg, Yuichi Ito, and Taiki Sakurai have been selected as the three jury members for the 2nd ANIAFF!
The three jury members for the International Feature Film Competition have been announced: Rupert Bottenberg, a Montreal-based editor, writer, visual artist, event producer, and content curator; Yuichi Ito, an animation director and professor in the Department of Animation, Graduate School of Film and New Media, Tokyo University of the Arts; and Taiki Sakurai, a producer, screenwriter, and CEO of Salamander Pictures.
Rupert Bottenberg（Director of Animation, Fantasia International Film Festival）
Rupert Bottenberg is an editor, writer, visual artist, event producer, and content curator based in Montreal, Canada. Since 2014, he has served as the director of Animation Plus, the animation section of Montreal’s Fantasia Film Festival.
In the early 1990s, Bottenberg founded the Montreal Comic Art Jams, a series of collaborative comics events, and organized satellite events in other North American cities. After contributing to Vice in its early newspaper stage, he served as music editor of the Montreal Mirror from 1998 to 2011. He later spent a decade as a co-director of the Montreal-based visual art initiative En Masse, a series of collaborative mural productions. His book of graphic literature, “Traumstadtdenken,” won Quebec’s Bédélys Indépendant award.
He currently acts as an advisor for Japan’s short animation creator support program NeW NeW (New Way, New World).
◼︎Jury Comments◼︎
Despite the enormous popularity and profitability of animated productions worldwide, the medium of animation remains mostly marginal in considerations of filmmaking as an art form, generally dismissed as disposable, culturally irrelevant entertainment for small children — in Western societies, in particular.
As a programmer of animated films at a prominent genre film festival in North America, I am exposed to a wide diversity of animated productions. Some are indeed of low quality, the cultural equivalent of junk food. Many, however, are works of remarkable originality, technical accomplishment, and artistic excellence. These films, often aimed at an adolescent or adult audience, and unattached to any commercial franchise, frequently struggle for recognition in a busy and often unforgiving marketplace.
Through the years, I have tracked the films I have selected following their screenings at Fantasia, and I have noted the value for these films of nomination for festival competition, even more so of winning awards. I’m very excited to participate as a juror for the awards at ANIAFF 2026, an opportunity to draw a greater degree of public attention to films that I and the other jurors agree demonstrate an outstanding balance of creativity, competence, popular appeal, and exceptional intellectual and emotional richness.
Yuichi Ito（Animation Director）
Born in 1962. Graduated from the Department of Design, Faculty of Fine Arts, Tokyo University of the Arts. After working at a VFX and CG production company, he founded I.TOON Ltd. in 1995 and has served as its representative ever since. He has developed a distinctive style known as “Neo-Craft Animation,” which combines stop-motion animation with VFX.
His major works include the NHK Educational TV series “Kyacki!”, now in its 31st year of broadcasting; the “Pon de Lion” commercials; the music video for Hikaru Utada’s “traveling”; and the short film “HARBOR TALE.” He also created the Garden Bear character for the National Urban Greenery Fair Yokohama and supervised the 2026 exhibition “What Is Stop-Motion Animation?” at the SKIP CITY Visual Museum.
Since 2008, he has been a professor in the Department of Animation, Graduate School of Film and New Media, Tokyo University of the Arts. He also serves on the board of ASIFA-JAPAN and as an auditor of the Japan Animation Association. He has served as a jury member at international animation film festivals, including SICAF and festivals in Hiroshima and Bratislava.
Taiki Sakurai（CEO / Producer / Script Writer）
Taiki Sakurai began his career as a screenwriter at Production I.G in 2002 with “Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex”. His writing credits also include “REDLINE” and numerous other titles. After serving as both screenwriter and producer on “Giovanni’s Island”, he shifted his focus to producing.
In 2017, he joined Netflix as Chief Director, leading its anime creative team for six years. His producing credits include “Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness”, “Gundam: Requiem for Vengeance”, “Pokémon Concierge”, and “Love Through a Prism”.
In June 2023, he founded Salamander Pictures, where he draws on his experience as a screenwriter and producer to develop new anime projects.
◼︎Jury Comments◼︎
What is animation?
Is it about making drawings move? Is it about something created by human hands? Does it need to tell a story? Every time a new technology emerges, the definition of animation has been rewritten, little by little. And today, its boundaries seem more blurred than ever.
As a juror, I suppose my role is to judge the films submitted to the competition. But perhaps the truly exciting works are the ones that challenge—and even break—the very standards by which we judge them.
I hope to encounter works that leave me wondering, “Can you really do this?”—only to find myself completely absorbed in them before I know it. The future, I think, always looks a little strange at first.