RIGA IFF: Selection of French animated short films

A Selection of French Animated Short Films | 60'

FR, BE

2025

fr, vi – screen languages

We recommend from the age of 16

Animation has redefined itself – it continues to surprise and fascinate us constantly, so RIGA IFF presents a selection of seven animated short films for adults. Discovering the horizons of current French animated cinema, in a unique screening it will be possible to see a selection of short films created by the French Animation Cinema Association (AFCA) from the Rennes National Animation Film Festival, where the best French animated cinema meets.

The screening of seven short films is united by the interest in childlike maturity and intelligent youth in the lives of women. In these short films, the body, memory, language, family and environment shape a person's identity and sometimes play a decisive role in its "disintegration". Here, the body suddenly becomes an object of public discussion, an innocent lie - a threat to spoil a date, a mother's love - a reason to run away to the forest, and thoughts about the future - a very nervous meeting with a version of one's past.

Seven reasons to look at yourself and others both more attentively and less seriously, and also to celebrate the animation form.

Elja Eni

Breast story

Du monde au balcon

FR

2025, 4', fr

We recommend from the age of 16

The body grows faster than you can understand it. The breasts become noticeable, the looks of others sharpen, but in the mirror there is not only a reflection of herself, but also everything that others have seen in it. Somewhere between condemnation, thoughts of shrinking, and public discussion of your body, there is you.

A sensitive, direct and playfully ironic story about growing up, body awareness and the agonizing feeling when your body has suddenly become the subject of public discussion. French animation director, screenwriter and animator Eni's short film has been screened at several film festivals - it has received jury recognition at the Rennes National Animation Film Festival and audience award festivals in Toulouse and Nice.

Violet Delvois

Mud under my window

Sous ma fenêtre, la boue

FR, BE

2025, 12', fr

We recommend from the age of 12

Emma's moms have two presences. One is always near, yet always busy, and the other is far away. The teenager longs for her parents and secretly resents the fact that they are never what Emma should be. Until one very ordinary day, something breaks - a darker, more uncomfortable layer of intimacy is revealed under the everyday surface.

A fragile, so familiar story about the love of parents and children, which sometimes hurts exactly where we long for its presence the most. The author of the short film Delvois is one of the most noticed young authors of French and Belgian animation - in her works she focuses on family relationships and the complex inner world of teenagers. The film was screened at the Berlin "Generation Kplus", at the Brussels International Animation Film Festival "Anima", while at the Rennes Festival it received the main prize.

Alice in Gervais

What a special person

Quelqu'un de spécial

FR

2025, 7', fr, vi

We recommend from the age of 16

Lisa has met someone special. Wanting to make an impression, the girl pretends to speak Vietnamese, a language her family used to speak in, but which now sounds foreign even to her. There is only one week left until the date, and the lie turns into both a hasty language learning and an unexpected trip into her own past.

With lightness, humor and a shojo anime aesthetic about love, the search for belonging and the awkward paths to what we once lost. Gervais is a French animation director, animator and illustrator who, with humor, romcom lightness and personal experience, addresses cultural identity in the film. The short film was screened at a number of international festivals, including the audience award at the Rennes festival.

Dylan Hall, Maja Matara

Agatha has to go

Agathe must go

FR

2025, 9', fr

We recommend from the age of 12

Ninety-year-old Agate lives in a lonely house dusted with snow, where the silence seems thicker than the walls. When daughter Freda arrives to take her mother to the nursing home, she sees a dead fox on the doorstep with its stomach cut open. Agate's strange behavior confuses, gradually revealing something unexpected. Take the festival at its word when we write that it is unexpected.

Encounters with aging, surreal sighs, Quentin Dupierre jokes and Schwankmeyer tragicomedy. The directing tandem of Hall and Matara work in stop-motion animation and reflect on how little we really know about the people closest to us. The film was included in the diploma film section of the Annecy International Animation Festival and received special recognition from the jury at the animation festival in Rennes.

Lena Martinez

Zoetrope

Zootrope

FR

2025, 8', fr

We recommend from the age of 12

Animals in the zoo are exposed to the gaze of strangers, but the spectators themselves turn into observers who gradually fall under the power of this gaze. Between the cages, grids and changing silhouettes of animals, the wild appears - framed, organized and comprehensible to humans.

Sandwiched between animation, documentary observation and visual essay, it is here that Martinez has chosen to scroll the word game between the illusionary cylinder of moving images and the zoological world. A quiet, visually refined walk through the space, where not only animal tracks have remained, but also the question of our own relationship with those who left them. At the Annecy International Animation Festival, this short film won the "Cristal" award as the best diploma film.

Anese Patrona

Fugue

Une Fugue

FR

2025, 15', no dialogue

We recommend from the age of 12

A Midsummer Night's Dream. A forest path, a river, two children and a memory that has become more and more blurred over the years. The woman returns to the landscapes of her childhood, where her brother's presence has remained only as a silhouette, feeling, movement and sound. Above all - a starry night.

Award-winning French author Patron's shot is painterly and sensual. Leading into the forest by the river, she conjures up the eternal radiance of magical bright memories. It illuminates childhood, loss, and how our unreliable memory simultaneously preserves and transforms what we cannot forget. The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival's Critics' Week special screening.

Claire Shum, Laura Mathieu, Selina Wu

You, version 31

You, version 31

FR

2025, 5', fr

We recommend from the age of 12

Computer screen. You are 21 years old. Notifications from the bank float on the screen. She is writing the 31st version of the script. Stuck in writing her diploma film, the girl takes a frantic leap into the future and encounters countless versions of her 31-year-old self. Avatars offer another life, another choice, and another possible self.

A playful animated miniature about growing up, generational angst and the impossible desire to find out who you will be at the age of 21. Although nothing changes at 31 (and unfortunately not at other ages either), directors Shuma, Mathieu and Wu offer an endless simulation of the anxiety of (not) knowing. Yes, like the film's main character, this film is also the thesis of the directing triumvirate, graduating from the Angouleme Animation Film School.

Recommended age: 16+

Display language: French, Vietnamese

Subtitle language: English

Synchronous translation: Latvian

Session duration: 60 min

Place for a wheelchair: yes

Honorable Families Discount: Yes

Organizer: Riga International Film Festival BDR