Animation Conference 2026
Jury Lecture
Animation at Fantasia and Genre Film Festivals
Overview
Animation is gaining an increasingly prominent place at film festivals around the world. What kinds of works are emerging, and what is capturing attention today?
Rupert Bottenberg, Director of Animation at Montreal’s Fantasia International Film Festival, traces the festival’s evolution while offering an inside look at the work of an animation programmer, from selecting and presenting films to curating short film programs.
Beginning with Japanese anime and expanding to China, South Korea, Taiwan, Europe, and Latin America, he explores the changing landscape of animation around the world and the new creative voices emerging within it.
Note: Simultaneous interpretation in Japanese and English will be provided via Zoom during this program. Please bring your smartphone and earphones.
Speakers
Director of Animation, Fantasia International Film Festival
Rupert Bottenberg
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 multidisciplinary events centred on the creation of improvised, collaborative comics, and organized satellite Comic Jam events in other cities including New York City, Ottawa, and Toronto.
After contributing to Vice in its early newspaper stage, Bottenberg served as music editor of the Montreal Mirror, the city’s leading English-language newsweekly, from 1998 to 2011. During this time, Bottenberg also curated several group art shows at independent galleries, and taught comics workshops for teenagers in conjunction with the Blue Metropolis literary festival.
Bottenberg then spent a decade as a co-director of the Montreal-based visual art initiative En Masse, an extensive series of improvised collaborative mural productions, and participated in En Masse For the Masses, the initiative’s pedagogical offshoot.
Bottenberg’s 2012 book of graphic literature, Traumstadtdenken (Éditions Trip), won Quebec’s annual Bédélys Indépandant award. Further books of comics and graphic literature include Traumstadtdenken 2 (Trip) and Fourscore Phantasmagores (CZP).
In 2019, Bottenberg returned to cultural media as a founding contributor to the bilingual music website PANM360, and he currently acts as an advisor for the Japan's short animation creator support program NeW NeW (New Way, New World).