The Big Cartoon Festival is the largest annual animation festival in Russia. Since 2007, it has been introducing Russian audience to the best examples of Russian and foreign animation. The Festival program includes screenings of full-length films, thematic programs of short animation for adults and children, meetings with leading artists and directors, and master classes on various animation techniques. During recent years, the Festival has been held in Moscow, Voronezh, Irkutsk, Krasnoyarsk, Nizhny Novgorod, Khabarovsk, Norilsk, Togliatti and Lipetsk, and in July 2020 it is held online for the first time.

16th Big Cartoon Festival (BCF) will take place in Moscow (Russia) between the dates of October 27 – November 7, 2022. The festival assumes offline screenings of all films of the competition programs, but reserves the right to transfer the event completely to the online format if it is impossible or unsafe for the participants to hold screenings in cinemas.

Dina Goder, Program Director of the festival: 

«We had a lot of discussions about how we should hold the festival and whether we should hold it at all now, as there is so much distress around. And we decided that we should. Throughout the fifteen years of BСF’s history, we have been speaking to our audiences through the language of animation on what we thought was the most important things, even if they were challenging and complicated topics. And we will continue this conversation. Our doubts and anxieties are still there, but we believe that festival meetings do exist for the purpose of being able to talk about all kinds of things. We have to be prepared for the fact that this year’s festival program will be smaller and may not include all the foreign films that we would like to show, but there will be no hiatus».

Условия подачи фильмов на конкурс-2021 на русском языке размещены здесь: https://multfest.ru/stat.php?id=557

Awards & Prizes

Jury of the International Competition presents the following prizes:
GRAND PRIХ for Best Short Animated Film
AWARD for Best Student Animated Film
AWARD for Best Non-narrative Animated Film
Special Jury Prize

Jury of the Russian Competition presents the following prizes:
AWARD for Best Russian Short Animated Film
AWARD for Best Russian Student Animated Film
AWARD for Best Russian Animated Film for Children
Special Jury Prize

Jury of the International Children Competition presents the following prizes:
AWARD for Best Episode of TV Show (under 12 y.o.)
AWARD for Best Episode of TV Show (over 12 y.o.)
AWARD for Best Foreign Animated Film for Children

Other Prizes
AUDIENCE CHOICE AWARD
CRITICS CHOICE AWARD
PRIZE of the BCF Management

The Festival has three juries:
1. International jury of the International Competition
2. Russian Jury of the Russian National Competition
3. International jury of the international competition of animated films for children and the international competition of TV shows

Each jury consists of three persons closely associated with the art of animation.
The list of members of the jury is formed in the period from July 1 to September 15, 2022. The names of the jury members are announced no later than 3 weeks before the start of the Festival. Films created by members of the jury are not eligible to participate in any of the competition programs that they judge. The decisions of the jury are final. The jury announces the results at the closing ceremony of the Festival on November 7, 2022. The jury has the right to refuse to award a prize in any category, if none of the works, in the
opinion of the jury members, meets its standards. The jury has the right to withhold an award in any category where no entries, in the jury’s view, meet its standards for recognition.

The winners of the Festival will be notified of the receipt of the prize at the closing ceremony (if they are present at it) or after its completion. The Festival sends prizes to film authors via courier delivery at the Festival's expense. If a representative of the winning film is present at the closing ceremony, the prize is handed over to him or her for self-delivery to their destination.

Rules & Terms

Submission of applications for the competition is carried out through the form posted on the Festival’s page on the FilmFreeway website.
Films selected for competitive sections will be screened without screening fees.
The festival accepts films from 1 to 30 minutes.
All films must not have participated in the previous editions of the Festival.
All films must have been completed after January 1, 2021.

Films are eligible for the Russian Competition if they are made in Russia or with a substantial contribution of a Russian main crew member.
Films are eligible for the Foreign Competition if submitted in English or with English subtitles.
Each film selected for the Festival can be included in the program of only one competition. The final decision on the inclusion of a film in a particular competition is reserved by the selection committee.
The Festival will not consider works-in-progress.
The Festival will not consider advertisements.
Filmmakers are responsible for sorting out the copyright on their own materials.
The Festival places no restrictions on your work in terms of premiere status or whether your work has been made available online.

The films selected for the competition can be shown as part of the competition programs in Moscow cinemas and/or online during the festival.
The Festival does not cover the costs of accommodation, purchase of air tickets, train tickets to /from Moscow, taxi to/from the airport to the city, as well as the cost of meals during the duration of the Festival participant's stay in Moscow.
Participants of the competition program have the right to receive free accreditation to attend the events of the festival.
The Festival can use any episode from the film of the competition program duration no more than 60 seconds, or no more than 10% of the total running time of the film. During the Festival, teasers of selected films may be screened at Festival venues, in TV spots promoting the BCF, on the website of the Festival, and in multimedia presentations during the Festival.
The Festival reserves the right to use film stills in promotional materials (Festival catalogue, Festival journal, leaflets, posters, billboards, website, and multimedia presentations), and provide them to the media for the purpose of disseminating information about the BCF.

Submission
Owners of the festival screening rights (hereinafter the “submitters”) may submit their films to the 16th BCF before July 20th, 2022 for all the competition programs.
No registration fee is required.
The sending of a completed entry form and film constitutes a submitter’s full acceptance of the Festival’s rules and regulations.
The deadline for the announcement of the selection results: no later than August 25, 2022.

Screening Formats & Supplementary Materials
Submitters must provide a screening copy as a full HD video file (1920x1080) without black bars and/or cropping, encoded with H264 video codec, packed as *.mp4 / *.mov / *.m2ts / *.mkv. As for the audio, general stereo mix (2.0) is OK, encoded with AAC.
If there is no h264 version of the film availible, either of the following will be acceptable: ProRes / DCP / BluRay (digital image).
If the Festival does not receive the required presentation copy in the proper format on or before September 15th, 2022 for the all competition programs, the selected work will be withdrawn from the Festival program.
The Festival also requires three (3) CMYK 300 dpi film stills, film description, dialogue lists (with time codes or an .srt file of English subtitles) and a link to the film trailer where applicable. Film description includes a synopsis, duration, country of production, studio of production, year of production, credit list, animation technique used and information about the film's prizes and its participation in competitions of other festivals.

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