A scene from Danny Boy by Marek Skrobecki
Danny Boy by Polish director Marek Skrobecki was awarded the prize for the best animation of the 62nd edition of the FilmVideo international short film festival in Montecatini in Tuscany, Italy
The film also received the Pinocchio Collodi Foundation Award for best animated film.
A ten-minute satire, full of irony, an image of a society where almost everyone has literally lost their head, is a commentary on one of the most absorbing subjects that concerns modern society - the alienation of people and their place in reality. The film touches on the problem of loneliness, sadness, conformity, a time of decisions and asks whether social adjustment should be conformed to others. In the anonymous urban mass one man stands out, Danny Boy, who, being a misfit (as he has his head), feels strongly alienated from the headless society. One day he meets someone who is ready to accept his dissimilarity. The idea of Skrobecki's film stems from the popular song Danny Boy.
This is not the first award for the animation. The film was honoured at the Neuchatel International Fantastic Film Festival with the Narcisse, HR Giger Prize Award - for the best Swiss short film and the Taurus Studio Award for the Best Film in Switzerland,the 2nd Audience Award at the Solothurn Film Festival, also in Switzerland. Also it was awarded at the Festival Ale Kino in Poznań - the award for best animated film for young people; at the International Festival of Animation ANIMANIMA in Čačak, Serbia, for directing; at the IFF in Transylvania as the best short film in Shadows Shorts section of the competition; and at International Short Film Festival Alpinale in Austria - the Golden Unicorn prize for the best animation.
A Polish/Swiss production, co-produced by Se-ma-for and Archangel has been qualified to the Polish Shorts competition at the 11th IFF New Horizons (21 - 31 July 2011, Wrocław) and has been selected for the Academy Awards 2011 in Best Animated Short category, so we'll see what happens next. The short film was produced with financial support from the Polish Film Institute and Łódź City Hall. Furthermore, it has been screened during several film events and also accepted for the competitive sections of festivals such as Melbourne, Solothurn in Switzerland, Hiroshima, Brazil and Kraków.
Marek Skrobecki is a director of animated films and puppet. He was the principal designer and co-directed the Oscar-winning Peter and the Wolf. The award-winning D.I.M. (1992) won the Special Jury Prize at Film Festival of Fantasy, Thriller & Science-Fiction and he received the diploma of honour at the 45th Krakow Film Festival for his film Ichthys (2005).
The for information on the international short film festival in Montecatini see: www.filmvideomontecatini.com.