LIAF 2025: Stop Motion Panorama

LIAF 2025: International Competition Programme 6

AGE 15+

Stop Motion Panorama

Since the dawn of cinema puppet animation has provided some of the most mesmerising films ever made and puppet animators have been among the most revered. Breathing a kind of life into inanimate puppets is a very special form of magic and this programme showcases the continuing vibrancy of this technique.

Puppet films should always look like they were handmade. The movements are not always clean, super smooth and flawless. The characters in the films should ‘feel’ real…. because they are! It is these quirks and wonderful little imperfections that make these films so special and define some of the most important elements of a puppet film.

These 9 thought-provoking, moving and downright loopy short puppet films have been made by some of the most talented independent animators in the last few years from their different bunkers around the world proving that tangible and physical stop-motion and puppet animation is alive and well and in rude health in the 21st century. Long may it prosper!

Several filmmakers will be in attendance to introduce their films at the start of the screening.

Total running time: approx 94 mins

Two Black Boys in Paradise

Eden(19) and Dula(18) are two Black boys on a journey of self-acceptance. Their love for each other, and their refusal to hide it, lands them in a paradise free from shame and judgement. Based on the poem by Dean Atta.

UK 2025 Dir: Baz Sells 8’50

Eating Time

Eating her way through time, a woman triggers a time shift and is plunged into a journey through a labyrinth of floors.

Estonia 2025 Dir: Mari Kivi 16’20

Psychonauts

Leaving their human hosts, mental disorders take on anthropomorphic forms and find new refuges.

Croatia 2025 Dir: Niko Radas 8’00

Double or Nothing

Akio Kashiwagi is a real estate shark in Tokyo in the 1980s. His great passion is illegal gambling in the underworld. An American is on his trail and tries to track down stolen money.

Switzerland 2025 Dir: Tokay Sirin 9’40

Atomik Tour

For Hugo, visiting Chernobyl’s forbidden area is not a commemorative trip. If this young tourist wanders through radioactive ruins, it is mainly to feed his Instagram account. This absurd quest will lead him to discover a population he never knew existed.

Czech Republic, France 2025 Dir: Bruno Collet 13’00

On Weary Wings Go By

A wintry poem of Nordic nature. The sun is low, days shorten. Birds fly South, porcelain animals and insects hide from the freezing wind and snow.

Estonia, Lithuania 2024 Dir: Anu-Laura Tuttelberg 10’35

The Wickywock and the JubJub Berry

In a woodland glade, an exhausted mythical creature is suffering from insomnia. When a small forest sprite appears and offers a sedative, it sounds like a perfect solution, but the fatigued Wickywock is too impatient to heed the Sprite’s terms.

UK 2025 Dir: Cat Johnston and Joseph Wallace 5’25

Tethered

After a chance encounter with a girl, a boy's longing to be with her is threatened by a mysterious pull from the Moon.

UK 2025 Dir: Alessandro Cino Zolfaneli 9’45

Murmuration

Trapped in a nursing home – a place of bingo, pills, dentures and dementia – an elderly man starts to wish he were one of the birds outside.

Netherlands, Belgium 2025 Dir: Janneke Swinkels, Tim Frijsinger 12’25