In the first few months of 2025, Chicken Fruit attended five animation festivals with our short film Loneliness & Laundry.
There are probably extroverts out there who are like, “Ooh, sounds fun! All the animation friends to hang out with!” but to be clear:
We’re not extroverts
We don’t really know many people on the animation festival scene, and
We haven’t really left the studio since 2020, because of the pandemic and because we were making the aforementioned short film.
That’s not to say we didn’t have fun! We did! But also – it’s so nice to be back home. 😅
The Festival of Short Film, Salford, UK
Because we received rejections from Manchester Animation Festival, Leeds International Film Festival and London International Animation Festival (💔), the UK premiere of Loneliness & Laundry was at Salford Uni’s Festival of Short Film in January. This was actually quite nice – it gave us a fairly low-pressure environment to remember how film festivals worked, and allowed us to figure out what our pandemic-era comfort levels are with crowded indoor spaces. (Seriously – we have not been out since 2020.)
The date of L&L’s first screening also happened to be perfect: completely coincidentally, it was the same date that the film ends on: January 17th. (Most of Loneliness & Laundry takes place on Blue Monday, for sadness thematic reasons.)
We had such a warm welcome at the Festival of Short Film, watched some brilliant films with a brilliant audience, had some really inspiring chats with students and tutors and even came away with an award: Best Animation Short!
This year, we’re trying to fumble our way through actually using our social media accounts, so we even made a silly reel of our trip back up north. Mostly it shows us frolicking around Salford pointing at things. Not sure it’s the sort of #content that the #marketing #influencers recommend, but we had fun trying.
Tokyo Anime Award Festival, Tokyo, Japan
You know how 200 words ago we were like, “it was good to have a low-pressure environment to figure things out!”? Our next festival was the exact opposite of that.
We applied to Tokyo Anime Award Festival because it was free and we figured, why not? We knew there wasn’t a chance of us getting accepted – when we applied, we’d been rejected from every single festival we’d submitted to, and also, it was Japan. Animation is, like, Japan’s whole thing. There was no way that our silly short film would make the cut.
And yet!
In December we got an email saying Loneliness & Laundry had been selected.
The email also said, hey, if your director wants to come to the festival, we’ll also contribute to the flights and hotel.
Look, we really do have to emphasise that we never left lockdown. We’ve had a couple of weekend breaks in remote British farmhouses, but that’s literally all the travelling we’ve done since 2019.
But, honestly. Who are we to say no to a trip to Japan when it lands in our inbox?
There’s so much we could say about our time in Japan – the character designs! the art bookshops! the konbini onigiri! 🍙 – but we’ll keep it to the festival for this one.
The festival was incredible.
It’s almost a running joke to UK animation folk how underfunded the industry is; being at a festival where animation is actually taken seriously was such a culture shock.
There was a formal opening ceremony wherein suited government officials and animation legends cut a ribbon with giant scissors to kick off the festival.
Each shorts screening had an announcer in a tuxedo to introduce the films, and a discussion afterwards where industry experts dissected each film.
There was a formal 30-minute Q&A with each filmmaker that was filmed and livestreamed by a whole media crew, with an incredible interviewer (万木 壮 / Sou Yurigi) and an equally incredible interpreter (馬場 円 / Madoka Bamba).
The filmmakers were guided to each venue, checked in, escorted to our seats.
And, of course, there was a formal award ceremony, with more tuxedo-clad announcers, more suited government officials, and more animation legends.
The selection of films shown at the festival was incredible. We showed up to the award ceremony with lists of our favourites, betting with each other on which ones would win, comfortable in the knowledge that Loneliness & Laundry was, at best, somewhere in the middle.
And then:
I swear we’re not just being modest. We were 100% certain we would not be on that stage that evening. So when we were actually had to get on the stage – in front of suited government officials, animation legends, what felt like the entirety of Japan’s press – we had nothing at all prepared as an acceptance speech. We mostly just giggled in complete disbelief, hopefully said how thankful we were (genuinely can’t remember – worried we didn’t) and also insulted the British government’s lack of arts funding.
You may also have noticed in the slideshow above that we were actually presented with TWO awards – the Short Animation Grand Prize and the Tokyo Governor’s Award. It was MAD. We had nooo clue how to handle ourselves. We still don’t. TAAF2025 was already a life-changing experience for us; the awards made it completely, utterly unreal.
Animation Dingle, Dingle, Ireland
Thankfully, although our next festival was also in a different country, it brought much more familiar vibes.
Animation Dingle is a festival focused on Irish animation and helping students break into the industry. We’re neither Irish nor students, so we were at the very bottom of the pecking order (rightfully so). There were free Animation Dingle tote bags being given out – as neither students no invited speakers, we weren’t even allowed one of those. Our film Loneliness & Laundry was being screened at the festival, but it was all the way across town, scheduled at the same time as talks and pitching events.
We did get super lucky in one respect: even though our film was being screened all the way across town in a marine life experience centre, about a dozen people did show up to the screening block. One of those people was Peter Lord, co-founder of Aardman, director of Chicken Run, an example of one of the aforementioned animation legends.
Was it a bit embarrassing that we literally leapt to our feet when he walked in? Probs. Did we manage to hold a coherent conversation with him while he very politely said nice things about our film? Probs not. Point is, Peter Lord watched our film. That’s worth more than a free tote bag any day.
British Animation Film Festival, London, UK
Two days after we arrived home from Dingle, we attended the British Animation Film Festival. This one was exciting for two reasons:
It was in London, which meant we could come home afterwards and sleep in our own beds, and
It was held in the British Museum, which, although some might argue is questionable as an institution, is undeniably quite a cool location to have your film play at.
We had no idea what to expect from this one, but it ended up being one of our favourite events. The set-up of the night was great: fifteen short films, with an interval in the middle (already a step up from many festival screenings that really don’t allow much time for breaks). But also after every 2–3 films, two excellent presenters (Stuart Brennan and Max McNamara) pulled some of the filmmakers on stage for a chat and asked genuinely interesting and insightful questions. This gave a much friendlier, enjoyable and relaxed vibe than the more typical 90 minutes of non-stop short films, then a Q&A with every filmmaker all at once, everyone awkwardly answering the same question and passing the mic along while the audience barely has any idea who made what.
The filmmaker Q&As did have one slightly jarring in one aspect: you’d be on stage, finishing up your chat with the (really, really excellent) presenters, then just before you headed back to your seat, there was a chance that they’d casually mention that you’d won an award. This is how Loneliness & Laundry received the Lottie Reiniger Award for Innovation, an award we didn’t even know existed, much less that we were nominated for! (We had been nominated for Best 3D Animation, but at the previous filmmaker Q&A someone else had been awarded that in an equally casual way, so we figured that was us done.)
There was also talk of an Audience Award: after all the screenings everyone could vote for their favourite. We figured this would be via an app or something, but no: it was to be via a show of hands.
This sounded absolutely mortifying. But it did mean we got to watch, completely disbelieving, while the majority of the audience voted for Loneliness & Laundry as their favourite film of the night.
This was BANANAS. It’s one thing to receive an award that may very well have been made up on the night just so we didn’t feel bad leaving empty-handed. It’s entirely another to have people watch your film then hold their hand up to say yep, that one was my favourite actually. We’ll never, ever stop being grateful.
Brighton Animation Festival, Brighton, UK
Five days after the British Animation Film Festival, we were off to Brighton. Technically we were nominated for an award in this one, too, but the only judge for our category (Izzy Burton) actually did the (incredible) concept art for our film, so we were basically disqualified from the start.
Brighton was intense. We’d booked festival passes so we could attend basically all of the screenings, but on reflection we probably over-committed ourselves: there was usually only a 20ish-minute break between each screening block, so we had to squeeze in meals and snacks huddled outside the venue, scarfing down sandwiches at record speed.
Because the Brighton Marathon was also that weekend, accommodation was limited, so we had a 45-min walk to and from the festival every morning and evening. This sounded lovely before we got there – an evening stroll by the sea! – but when facing a 10pm finish for the final screening of the day (plus drinks + socialising afterwards), we weren’t brave enough to stick it out, so we ended up skipping the final blocks on both days. (Another benefit of having the judge work on our film – we knew we didn’t really need to stay for the awards ceremony!)
But it’s hard to deny that the strolls by the sea were really lovely, actually, and of the nearly 100 short films we watched that weekend, we found some new favourite films and creators. We also had the chance to chat to more UK-based animators, which is always a treat!
Plus, the brilliant talk by Dom Minns from Brighton Zoo had some really inspiring slides:
We got back from Brighton ready to collapse on our sofa and not move for at least a week.
Of course, what actually happened is we immediately jumped into an animation project that will be out in the world in June. But we definitely can’t complain – after over two months away, it’s really nice to be back in the studio. (Plus it’s a really exciting project!)
We’ve submitted L&L to about 10 more festivals that we’ll start to hear back from over the summer. Our submission journey has been so wild – immediate rejections from some festivals; multiple awards from others(!) – so we have no idea what to expect from the future. Maybe we’ve already attended our last festival with this film. Maybe we still have another 10 to come! Either way, it’s already been such an incredible experience, and the perfect way to re-introduce ourselves to society.
Huge, huge thank yous to everyone on all the festival teams, to everyone whose incredible films we’ve watched, and everyone we’ve chatted to over the last few months! It’s been a spring we’ll never, ever forget.
Finally, some of our favourites from the hundreds of animated short films we watched this spring (in alphabetical order):
another go – Elisa Beli Borrelli
Dead Weight – Øyvind Tangseth
Floaters – Mocong Yuan
HEY DAD – WeiFan Wang
In Sync With the Sun – Emily Downe
Loop Line – Renuka Shahane
Marvelous Gift – Danna Galeano
Pietra – Cynthia Levitan
Snow Bear – Aaron Blaise
Tennis Oranges – Sean Pecknold
The Bear and the Bird – Marie Caudry
The Shyness of Trees – Bingqing Shu, Maud Le Bras, Simin He, Loïck Du Plessis D’argentré, Sofiia Chuikovska, Lina Han, Jiaxin Huang
The Three Sisters – Timur Kognov
Voicemail – Iona Menzies
Welcome to sexy – Nina Hoffmann
