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This year’s Animation Now unleashes the unique properties of animation across a wide variety of techniques, bringing to life a diversity of sumptuous, often complex creative visions.

Our longstanding animation programmer Malcolm Turner, also head honcho at the Melbourne International Animation Festival, offers a selection of the best and brightest from this year’s Animation NOW! Festival.

This year’s big-screen celebration of the latest and best animated shorts is a dazzler, including Don Hertzfeldt’s World of Tomorrow, winner of the Grand Jury Prize for Best Short Film at Sundance.

Eye-grabbing animations from China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore make our first ever survey of new work and indie talent in the region an Animation Now! highlight.

A celebratory showcase of some of the year’s best and brightest animated shorts. If you’re looking to sample the animation ecosystem in all of its multi-coloured, variously-shaped glories, there’s no better place to begin.

This stunning selection of animated shorts testifies to enduring creative vitality in pre-digital techniques as varied as pixilation, puppet animation, paint on glass, print on film and whirlwind stop-motion.

This abundantly varied programme takes a dozen recent animated shorts from ten countries to prove that animators do not always require colour to take us deep into their own worlds – and ours.

A celebratory showcase of some of the year’s best and brightest animated shorts. If you’re looking to sample the animation ecosystem in all its multicoloured, variously-shaped glories, there’s no better place to begin.

The profusion of energy, skill and idiosyncratic vision on display in this showcase of recent animation from China is amazing – and the spirit of independence fills every frame.

A celebratory showcase of some of the year’s brightest and best animated shorts. If you’re looking to sample the animation ecosystem in all of its multi-coloured, variously shaped glories, there’s no better place to begin.

Seriously impressive new work from nine of the biggest names in the animation pantheon is brought together in this stimulating and highly enjoyable programme.

A programme of shortlisted finalists from this year’s Animation NOW!, judged by a panel of programmers and animators, with a jury prize donated by Victoria University Wellington, School of Design awarded to the winning film on the night.

A celebratory showcase of some of the year’s best and brightest animated shorts. If you’re looking to sample the animation ecosystem in all its multi-coloured, variously shaped glories, there’s no better place to begin.

Based in Barcelona, Punto y Raya is a nomadic festival celebrating the art of animation in its most abstract forms. Prepare to be dazzled. This collection showcases highlights of the 2016 edition.

From the dark side, this bold, bracing collection of short films goes deeper and blacker than live-action will allow.

Psychic freak-outs, scuzzy behaviour, inscrutable creepiness and scathing satire are celebrated in this short-film showcase of animation’s dark side.

A surprising amount of animation is created in black and white. This carefully curated programme musters a collection of shorts that harness the creative promise of light, shade, form, texture and movement – without colour.

A celebratory showcase of some of the year’s brightest and best animated shorts. If you’re looking to sample the animation ecosystem in all of its multi-coloured, variously shaped glories, there’s no better place to begin.

Curated by Malcolm Turner, animation programmer at NZIFF since 1988, and director of the Melbourne International Animation Festival.

An inspiring selection of new, award-winning animated works from around the world. This is where animation is right now.

Los Angeles plays itself in this bracing compilation of animated shorts by the city’s best independent practitioners of the form.

A wellspring for innovation and invention in animation, we celebrate Estonia and its new generation of audacious, forward-thinking animators.

A wild and otherworldly programme of animation at its craziest and most creative.

Drawings move, paintings come to life and puppets take the stage, one painstaking frame at a time.

The impossible and improbable comes to life in this kinetic collection of animation that not only pushes the envelope, but busts it wide open.

A powerful collection of animation exploring the singular creative visions of artists in touch with the dark side of the human condition.

A celebratory showcase of some of the year’s best and brightest animated shorts. If you’re looking to sample the animation ecosystem in all its multi-coloured, variously-shaped glory, there’s no better place to begin.

Glorious highly imaginative animated images in myriad formats, selected with an eye to the giant screen, from the world’s best by NZIFF veteran/Melbourne International Animation Festival supremo Malcolm Turner.

Diversity is always one of the aims we embrace in the process of putting our annual Animation Now programme together.

Cut-outs, paint-on-glass, puppetry, watercolour on tile, scratch films and hand-drawn work all feature in this year's selection of the best animated shorts from around the world.

Drawn from a record 2,200 submissions, this diverse selection of 15 short animations from France, South Africa, Taiwan and beyond showcases an incredible swirl of styles, techniques and genres.

A private detective and her android partner track down a notorious hacker in the dark underbelly of a Martian metropolis in this superb cyber-punk-noir animated feature, packed with humour and action.

From a mysterious stone circle in southwest England, to the backwater canals of Venice, to suburban New Zealand, these five inventive shorts take us on an ethereal journey and open our eyes to new perspectives.

Five unconventional shorts from around the world deliver twisted tales of teenage heartbreak, relationship doom, queer romance, online commodification and a feverish found-footage dream of sex and death.

Our popular yearly programme of the year’s best animate shorts is one of the strongest collections in a long time, celebrating the sheer diversity of the animated art form. Including the Oscar winning Ryan.

An international showcase of impressive recent animation in a wide array of techniques, digital and analogue, with an emphasis on the abstract and the expressive – and a few gag-based pieces too.

Diversity is the word this year in our annual collage of animated gems – films that dare you to reach out and run your hands over the textures of paint and pencil.

Narrowed down from an amazing 2000+ entries, this year’s survey of the best in animated short films covers the gamut from sumptuous painterly Russian styles to the most inventive and expressive CGI, including NZ-made Poppy.

Bringing the work of master collagist Lewis Klahr to New Zealand for the first time, this new collection of short films offers a terrific introduction to his eye-zapping assemblages of 60s pop culture ephemera.

More than 2,000 films from 45 countries covering every conceivable subject and every imaginable technique were previewed to select this programme of the year’s most imaginative and beautifully realised animated shorts.

Sex, violence and scabrous visions of human infamy rule in this international panorama of R-rated animated shorts, including acclaimed new work from several masters of the art.

NZIFF recommends this programme for children aged 8+

An animation retrospective (1921-78) featuring some of the most iconic, important abstract animated films ever created: a virtual “Who’s-Who” of the genre.

A comic nightmare of three strange characters connected by unsolved crimes and the local newspaper, Christopher Sullivan’s animated slice of small-town Americana is as far from family-friendly as animated features come.

A shy girl makes a mysterious new friend while convalescing in a sleepy seaside village in this gorgeous Studio Ghibli adaptation of the children’s novel by Joan G. Robinson. Animated by Yonebayashi Hiromasa (Arrietty).

A deftly made, delightfully illustrated, femme-focused animated film from Colombia about growing up in a decidedly unconventional family. Winner of the Audience Award for foreign films at SXSW 2018.

This wordless, sensuous, uniquely original animated film follows Cuca, a young Brazilian boy who ventures from his simple countryside home into a neon-infused, carnivalesque metropolis in search of his father.

Set in a spectacular post-apocalyptic world many thousands of years in the future, this riotously inventive, action-packed 3D animation epic from YiLi Studios in China is like nothing we’ve ever seen before.

Director Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Mood Indigo) and philosopher-activist Noam Chomsky talk about life and language in a conversation gorgeously illuminated with Gondry’s hand-drawn animations.

A shy girl makes a mysterious new friend while convalescing in a sleepy seaside village in this gorgeous Studio Ghibli adaptation of the children’s novel by Joan G. Robinson. Animated by Yonebayashi Hiromasa (Arrietty).

An irony-free kaiju blockbuster that simultaneously pays respectful homage to the original Ultraman mythos while re-energising the beloved character with kinetic high-tech filmmaking.

This incredibly moving and fascinating doco takes us into the interior life of autistic Owen Suskind, and explores how his love of Disney animated features gave him the tools as a child to communicate with the world.

A programme for the very youngest Festival-goer. We had children from three to six in mind when we selected these animated gems from around the world. Culminating in the rather scary but happily resolved The Gruffalo’s Child.

Disturbingly riveting account of the true stories behind 2005 Oscar-winning animated short Ryan. Rest assured, this is no ‘Making Of’ blurb piece.

The best of recent Asian CGI shorts – narratives, ads, music videos – as selected from a 1000 entries at the prestigious SIGGRAPH (Special Interest Group on GRAPHics and Interactive Techniques) Asia Festival.

Based on a Hans Christian Andersen story, this classic of hand-drawn animation follows a chimney sweep and shepherdess on the run from a tyrannical king.

Graphic design and animation morph into a single artform in the best of recent International CGI shorts – narratives, ads, music videos – as selected from a 1000 entries at the prestigious SIGGRAPH Asia Festival.

Two secret agents from enemy Kingdoms are sent to a world on the brink of a terrible war where they have one important mission: to find the Perlimps, mysterious creatures who can ultimately bring peace.

Sam Hamilton and Eve Gordon present an amazing collection of cinema experimentation and live music.

Changes in official attitudes to mental illness from the 19th century until now are reflected in the architectural history of New Zealand’s psychiatric institutions, in Kathy Dudding’s poetic, emotionally-loaded essay film.

This surreal anime from the mind of a young Mamoru Oshii (Ghost in the Shell), remains just as unique as it was in the 80s. Returning with a stunning 4K restoration that brings its dreamy visuals to stunning life.

This extraordinary animated film captures director Air Folman's struggle to recover his lost memories of what he saw and what he did during Israel's ill-fated 1980s war in Lebanon.

We’ve searched near and far, and high and low to collect this latest selection of short film delights, selected especially to charm and captivate our littlest film fans.

Recommended for ages 4+

In anime master Kon Satoshi's (Millennium Actress) latest exhilarating thriller/detective story, a shrink must recover the machine that allows psychotherapists to alter their patients' dreams.

The subject of old age gets the kind of attention it deserves but is too rarely afforded in this funny, affecting and sugar-free animated tale of the survival strategies devised by two old men in a nursing home.

A captivating portrayal of the human impact of the Middle East conflict, told with a deft mix of live action and animation, Samouni Road reveals the impact on one extended family of Israel’s brutal 2009 assault on a Gaza village.

Little Sophie has been kidnapped by a giant bear – and he’s much better company than her cranky older brother. This charming Nordic expedition into the deep dark woods should entertain anyone old enough to read the subtitles.

John Hughes’ fascinating documentary about dissent in Cold War era Australia offers a timely commentary on the challenges facing oppositional voices in dark times.

Blonde action babe Deunan separates the robots from the bioroids in this spectacular exhibition of conventional anime character design amalgamated with state-of-the-art CG effects. “Eye-goggling.” — Screendaily

The latest, superbly animated classic from Studio Ghibli’s Miyazaki Goro is the tender 60s tale of schoolgirl Umi and her dashing friend Shun. Completely charming, Poppy Hill does not reserve its many treasures for children alone.

There’s no such thing as instant stardom in this rousing dramatisation of the true story of Mohammed Assaf, a boy from Gaza whose golden voice took the Arab world by storm in 2013.

Path 99 combines planetarium immersion with an enveloping electronic soundtrack, showing us how, now more than ever, it is crucial that we all have our heads in the clouds.

Path 99 combines planetarium immersion with an enveloping electronic soundtrack, showing us how, now more than ever, it is crucial that we all have our heads in the clouds.

A beautifully ambiguous story of friendship, love and loss. At times heart-warming, at others heart-wrenching, this wordless fable explores what happens when the closest of bonds are weathered away by time and circumstance.

Meet Marcel, a tiny talking shell, on a big-hearted big-screen stop-motion adventure, as tender and funny as it is insightful and poignant.

Get close to the stray dogs of Turkey as Elizabeth Lo’s camera becomes a canine companion, guiding us through a cross-section of Istanbul society as lived by our four-legged friends.

James Nguyen’s insanely bad eco-horror, inspired by The Birds, Apocalypse Now and An Inconvenient Truth, is already a legend. “We confirm that it’s the worst-film-ever experience of the season and that you need to see it.” — Vice

“From acrobatic flies to suckling bees, Smith’s stop-motion nature films astonished viewers a century ago. Now Tindersticks’ Stuart Staples has set them to music in a dark and dreamy movie.” — Patrick Barkham, The Guardian

Deborah Kerr and Yul Brynner are the definitive Anna and the King of Siam in the dazzling movie of the evergreen Rogers and Hammerstein musical, spectacularly transferred to digital for its 60th anniversary.

"We are in the hands of a master… his imagery is so boilingly alive that we come away from it feeling exhilarated rather than depressed." — David Chute, LA Weekly

In a landmark year for hard-hitting activist cinema, Al Gore’s straightforward and devastating film on global warming stands out as exceptionally well-honed and persuasive.

A beautiful, timely restoration of Chulas Fronteras (meaning ‘Beautiful Borders’), folklorist/cine-poet Les Blank’s classic ode to Norteña music and the migrant culture that exists along the Texas–Mexican border.