Award Winners Announced at the Seventh Voyage of Rising of Lusitania AnimaDoc Film Festival
Skwigly
Confessions of Undecided Women (Finland, 2024) by Milja Härkönen
The seventh voyage of the Rising of Lusitania AnimaDoc Film Festival has reached its final shore. Hosted at the alternative art club UV in Łódź (a city whose name in Polish means “boat”), this year’s edition spanned four exciting Sundays (September 7, 14, 21, and October 12, 2025).
The festival featured 49 films from 27 countries, presented across three competition cabins:
- Professional AnimaDoc – 19 films
- Student AnimaDoc – 12 films
- MOCK<anima>DOC – 10 films (a playful, mysterious section blending satire, humor, and parody)
In addition, nine films were showcased in the non-competitive Panoramic View from the Command Deck program.
Professional Jury Awards
The three-person professional jury – Małgorzata Bosek-Serafińska, Katarzyna Dąbkowska, and Radosław Łabarzewski – faced a dazzlingly high standard of work. Their final choices were both bold and surprising:
- Lusitania Grand Prix (Best Professional AnimaDoc): The Rabbit Always Dies (USA, 2025, 8:46) by Oona Taper – An experimental documentary revealing the strange history of pregnancy tests from the 1930s–60s involving frogs and rabbits.
- Jury Special Award: Blind Spot (Tunisia, 2021, 13:13) by Lotfi Achour – A haunting account of a young man’s fate under Ben Ali’s dictatorship, intertwined with his mother’s relentless plea: “Where did you abandon my son’s body?”
Student Jury & Student Awards
The Rising Award for Best Student AnimaDoc went to:
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The Only One to Care (Ukraine, 2025, 7:58) by Kateryna Omelianenko – A stark, unsentimental look at life for disabled people during the war in Ukraine.
Jury Special Award (Student Category):
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Confessions of Undecided Women (Finland, 2024, 19:59) by Milja Härkönen – An intimate reflection on women in their thirties facing the question of motherhood. This film also received the Students4students Special Mention.
Students4students Award (Best Student AnimaDoc):
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Polio (Czech Republic, 2025, 5:10) by Klára Kubenková – A hopeful portrait of elderly women living fully despite lifelong consequences of the polio epidemic.
The five-person Student Jury (Martyna Ambrosiewicz, Ams Sokołowska, Hanna Tkachova, Wiktoria Witkowska, and Ida Woźniak) made their own independent selections in the professional competition:
- Best Professional AnimaDoc (Student Jury): Can You Hear Me? (Poland, 2024, 15:00) by Anastazja Naumenko – A tender film where teaching Zoom lessons uncovers hidden family trauma.
- Special Mention: The Sacred Society (USA, 2024, 12:32) by Benny Zelkowicz – A sand animation documenting volunteers who ritually prepare the dead according to Jewish tradition.
Audience Awards
Festival audiences added their own voice by awarding:
- Professional Category: Simply Divine (Romania, 2024, 14:02) by Mélody Boulissière & Bogdan Stamatin
- Student Category: Pacifier (China, 2024, 5:02) by Xiaoxuan Han (Tsinghua University)
- MOCK<anima>DOC Make-Believe Award: The Soviet Phoenix (Germany, 2024, 9:10) by Tim Aßmann
After four Sundays filled with creativity, courage, and discovery, the seventh voyage of the Rising of Lusitania AnimaDoc FF reaffirmed its place as a unique international meeting point for animated documentary.