OIAF 2025 Jury Roll Call
Skwigly
The Ottawa International Animation Festival (OIAF) reveals its 2025 jury members, including Canadian animators Winston Hacking and Chris Lavis. The Short Film Jury includes the expertise of Hacking (Canada), Gina Kamentsky (USA) and Phil Mulloy (UK), while the Feature Film Jury is formed by Dr. Magdelena Zira (Cyprus), Lavis (Canada) and Honami Yano (Japan). The respective juries will view the OIAF Official Selections during the Festival and determine which films will be recognized at the Award Ceremony on September 27, 2025, at the National Arts Centre.
“Selecting the perfect jury is much like crafting a memorable meal: it’s all about balancing the right ingredients and flavours. This year’s festival brings together some of the world’s most celebrated independent animation artists—many of whom are already beloved by OIAF audiences,” says OIAF Artistic Director Chris Robinson. “We’re delighted to feature two of the most creative contributors to Canadian culture: the collage master Winston Hacking and Chris Lavis, one half of the acclaimed Clyde Henry duo.”
A graduate of Sheridan College‘s Media Arts program, Hacking is known for recontextualizing found footage and photography through compositing and stop-motion animation. He’s directed music videos for Flying Lotus, Andy Shauf, and Run The Jewels, showcasing his work at festivals and local and international microcinemas.
Lavis’s first film, Madame Tutli-Putli (2007), created with artistic partner Maciek Szczerbowski, was recognized with an Academy Award nomination for Best Animated Short Film in 2008. The duo’s collaboration under the banner of Clyde Henry has spanned decades and includes Higglety Pigglety Pop! or There Must Be More to Life (2010) and Gymnasia (2019). Their latest work with the National Film Board of Canada, The Girl Who Cried Pearls (2025), was chosen as the opening film of the 2025 Annecy International Animation Festival.
“As long as we’ve been organizing this festival, our goal has always been to achieve both cultural and gender balance and to assemble jury members with experience across commercial and independent animation. This approach helps us maintain objectivity and ensures that our jury members can appreciate the full spectrum of animation artistry,” says Robinson. “I’m especially thrilled to welcome Magdalena Zira to our jury lineup. While she brings valuable animation insight from her work with Animafest Cyprus, she is foremost recognized as an academic, theatre director, and writer; her distinct perspective will enrich our deliberations at OIAF.”
On the Short Film Jury, Hacking’s expertise will complement the knowledge of Kamentsky and Mulloy. An animator, kinetic sculptor and sound artist, Kamentsky has progressed through numerous forms of work over her three-decade career, including painting, drawing and collaging on film, rotoscope, musique concrète, sound collage, stop-motion and pixilation. After finding success working in live‑action films, Mulloy turned his attention to animation, developing a recognizable minimalist style that is at once grotesque and darkly comic. Best known for his trilogy Intolerance 1, 2, 3 (2000-2004), series Cowboys (1991) and The Ten Commandments (1994-1996), Mulloy’s Christies (2006, 2010, 2011) series broke new ground by winning an unprecedented three Grand Prizes for Best Animated Feature at OIAF.
Zira and Yano will join Lavis on the Feature Film Jury. An artistic collaborator of Animafest Cyprus since 2012, Zira is a theatre director and classics scholar, having written plays, the scripts for short films and has adapted texts for the stage. She co-founded the award-winning feminist theatre company Project Season Women, and in 2019 was awarded the Artist of the Year award by the State Theatre of Cyprus. During an exchange program at the Rhode Island School of Design, Yano discovered independent animation. She later attended the Graduate School of Film and New Media at Tokyo University of the Arts, studying under Koji Yamamura. Her first post-graduate film, A Bite of Bone (2021), received the Grand Prize for Short Animation at the 45th OIAF.
The OIAF is accepting entries until 11:59 pm ET on May 31, 2025. There is no fee to submit a film to the Festival. If selected as a part of the Official Competition, animated works will be screened during the Festival before the juries and are eligible for awards.