Chicory 'n' Coffee successful at international festivals

16. July 2009
New international awards for Dušan Kastelic's short animation

Since Dušan Kastelic's Chicory 'n' Coffee premiered at the last year's Festival of Slovenian Film and won the Vesna Award for Best Animation, three seasons have passed.

The film, inspired by Iztok Mlakar's song with the same title, has since participated at numerous international festivals and also won a number of awards. After the national award it received in the autumn, the first international recognition followed in March at the Cineposible Festival, where it received the Pilar Bardem Award, given for the best films on women's rights.
Then it received the jury award for the best animated film at the International Film Festival in San Joaquin and another national award - the Grand Prix at the Festival 600 in Ljubljana.

In the spring it was promoted at the Cannes Film Festival in the so-called "Short Film Corner" section, dedicated to the presentation of short films. Besides Dušan Kastelic's animation, another Slovenian short live-action film was also presented here: Stealing The Corn directed by Martin Turk.
The presentation was followed by international offers for distribution, proposals by foreign producers to cooperate with the author and, naturally, numerous invitations to different festivals.

In the beginning of the summer the film participated at important festivals: it was presented in the official competition section at the Worldwide Short Film Festival in Toronto (Canada), Edinburgh Festival (Scotland), American festivals in Atlanta, Palm Springs and Los Angeles as well as at Anima Mundi Festival in Brazil and Expression en Corto in Mexico.

"Chicory" has just celebrated its 20th participation at international festivals. We have also just received great news of another two awards from Spain again. The animation festival MUNDOS DIGITALES granted two out of four awards to Chicory 'n' Coffee: the Best Animation Short and Special Jury Prize.

Mundos Digitalis is a festival, established eight years ago as a training event for students in the field of animation and computer graphics. In Spain this field is developed most of all European countries. This festival still consists of expert lectures from the field of animation and a selection of films, which are - in the opinion of professor Manuel Meijida, the initiator and director of this festival, and his students - most representative of the field of 3D graphics each year.
This year 8 finalists were chosen out of 200 invited films: four from Spain and four in the international competition. Besides Dušan Kastelic's Chicory 'n' Coffee, two other animations received awards: the French animation entitled "Mon ami Charly" and a Spanish animation entitled "Tachaaan!"