29.08.2025
Thank you 10th TAFF!
The tenth Turku Animated Film Festival has come to an end, and what a celebration it was!
Organized since 2016, TAFF celebrated its anniversary this year by once again bringing bold, original, and uncompromising animations, international and domestic guests, and a wonderful selection of exhibitions and side events to Turku, Finland’s animation capital. The anniversary year offered both a review of the festival’s colorful history and a glimpse into the future of animation.
The festival closes with smiles all round, so it’s time to say thank you, take off your festival pass and look back fondly on the week’s events. It was particularly delightful to see a large crowd of old friends and brand new faces celebrating the festival’s tenth anniversary. TAFF proved its important place in Turku’s cultural scene and attracted a record audience to its animations. This year, the number of visitors more than doubled, with TAFF’s screenings and side program nearly breaking the 4,000 visitor mark! This is a great achievement for a ten-year-old festival, whose visitor numbers have usually remained around 2,000. The programme’s high-level competition series remained a favorite with the audience, but TAFF’s special feature, free screenings for schoolchildren, also once again also attracted hundreds of young people to the animations. Juhana Moisander’s exhibition SERMON proved to be a real hit: over a thousand visitors gathered to hear the moral sermon of a meatless pig.
The festival opened on Wednesday with a gala screening highlighting its 10th anniversary theme, bringing together memorable films from TAFF’s history on the silver screen at the Kino Kilta arthouse cinema. “The theme of the screening depicted the city and its inhabitants from morning to night, from residential areas to the tranquility of nature,” describes Joni Männistö, the festival’s artistic director. The themed screenings outside the competition series also included a screening of Palestinian animations, which gave the festival audience a chance to pause and to consider difficult questions.
The outdoor screening in Brinkkala’s courtyard, organized in collaboration with Kirjakahvila, once again proved its place at the heart of urban culture: despite the cold August evening, the courtyard was almost full as people gathered to enjoy Norwegian director Mats Grorud’s film The Tower (2018).
The festival exhibitions also brought moving images to gallery spaces. The opening night of visual artist Juhana Moisander’s exhibition SERMON attracted nearly a thousand visitors to Gallery Aski in the Art House, while the VR exhibition States of Nature – Virtual Experiments in the Media Studio of the Art House drew the festival audience into the miniature worlds and distortions of virtual reality. Featured artists were: Soile Mottisenkangas, Juha Mustonen (Dos Robots), Pauliina Salminen, Reetta Neittaanmäki and Kaisa Penttilä (Ambulance).
Manilla, meanwhile, hosted Vappu Rossi’s work Generatio Spontanea and animation artist Miira Tonteri’s animated work Erään omenan elämä (the Life of an Apple) and its original drawings throughout the festival.
The anniversary year’s professional event, TAFF Pro, focused on the future of animation and the connections between different art forms. Over the course of two days, attendees heard presentations from, among others, Samppa Kukkonen, director at animation studio Pyjama Films, which is also celebrating its tenth anniversary and media artist Jukka Hautamäki’s lecture on the role of artificial intelligence in art. A special treat in the program were two live expanded cinema performances by Filmverkstaden artists Britt Al-Busultan and Natalia Koziel-Kalliomäki.
Saturday evening in Manilla culminated in an award ceremony, where a total of 10 prizes were handed out. The Grand Prix, awarded to Sasha Svirsky’s film Dull Spots of Greenish Colours received the most attention at the awards gala. The jury described the work as a painful but exceptionally honest and original journey into the depths of the past: “This film searches for answers in a very unique way. Through personal experience, distinctive visual style, and experimental animation, the filmmaker takes us on a painful, deeply touching journey.”
Among the National Competition, the winner was Jenny Jokela’s beautiful hand-painted computer animation Dollhouse Elephant. According to the jury, the work “awakens all our senses and explores how we must interact with our neighbors and learn that community is built on understanding, not just living together.”
Veera Lamminpää’s Fish River Anthology (Mereneläviä) was awarded as the audience favourite.
Ella Karkulehto and Mea Kemppainen, representatives of the jury from the 8C art class at Luostarivuori School, awarded the TAFF Junior prize to Elena Walf’s work A Pain in the Butt (Der Stachel im Po), which made the youngest (and why not the older ones too) laugh and empathize with the twists and turns of the story. The schoolchildren explained their decision as follows: “It was a difficult choice because there were so many good films. We chose this one as the winner because it was funny and creative.”
Several other gems were also honored during the evening. Quirijn Dees’s uniquely original Pubert Jimbob was recognized with the Tough Eye Award for its depiction of an ordinary man’s strange day, in which 2D and 3D collide boldly and imaginatively.
Marta Reis Andrade was awarded the prize for best professional animation for her film Dog Alone (Cão Sozinho), which deals with loneliness and empathy between generations and species.
In addition, Eddy Wu’s IMMATURE won the award for best student film, capturing the growth of a young mind and the painful process of self-discovery.
The heart of TAFF has always been its audience, animators, and volunteers. This year, Manila’s Culture Factory and Art House Turku were filled with animation enthusiasts and professionals from various fields, who once again made the festival unforgettable. Thank you to our professional and inspiring jury: Pavel Horáček, Michaela Müller, and Petrit Gora; to all our hard-working volunteers; to the world’s best festival production team; to our dear partners; and to everyone who makes TAFF possible. But the biggest thanks go to you, our dear animation-hungry audience—without you, we wouldn’t be able to talk about the magic of TAFF!
As the anniversary year draws to a close, our gaze turns to the future: at TAFF 2026, inanimate objects and characters will come to life and gain a soul when animation and puppet theater meet. The theme was already hinted at in this year’s award ceremony, where puppets assisted the festival’s first director Kimmo Sillanmikko and the jury in presenting the awards. Next year, the theme will be explored in depth when TAFF collaborates with, among others, the Turku-based puppet theater Aura of Puppets.
See you again in August 2026 – more animation magic and surprises await!