We present a list of 30 animations you can’t miss at the Korean Independent Animation Film Festival – Indie-AniFest that will be held from September 22th – 27th in Seoul, South Korea.

A Flat Bench by Cho Hyun-soo, Hwang Dong-wook – South Korea | 2015 – 3:13 min.

One summer day, a man brings a flat bench which is found with thrash to his place. He spends time with friends and a girlfriend. As time goes by, he’s got married, got child, and gets older with the flat bench. He still lives with the flat bench at the same place, living a diverse daily life.

Director’s Comments
Time gives us souvenirs as takes our belongings from us. We lose something precious that we couldn’t recognize before we miss that. A flat bench, a man’s shelter, friend and witness of his life could be a souvenir for us, which makes us miss something and somebody.

A Night of Counting Stars by Kang Heeen – South Korea | 2016 – 3:05 min.

The main character is feeling lack of something deep inside him. He is attracted to the stars while he is climbing up a hill on a starry night. The stars soon become a passion with him and he gradually feels an eager desire for having a star in his hands. Led by the enchanting light of the stars, he embarks on a journey towards the stars and unexpectedly, he encounters another world beyond the stars. Because he is blinded by his obsession, he abandons the world he belongs to and finally faces a tragic end.

Director’s Comment
Inspired the famous Korean poem, “A Night of Counting Stars,” written by Dong-ju Yoon, we focused on the fact that people watch and count on the stars and it leads people to become emotional and look back on their lives. We thought the stars have a symbolic meaning of an unreachable goal, desire or dream that is too idealistic to make it real. Through the animation, we aimed to portray a tragic story of a man who is gradually attracted to the stars not knowing that his obsession can drive him towards a self-destruction.

About Coati by Alexandra Slepchuk – Russia | 2015 – 6:00 min.

This story shows you how to turn your weaknesses into strengths and someone who mocks at you, will eventually see the true value of your deeds. Sometimes the oddities can help you to become meaningful and to gain recognition.

About Death by Lee Eunjae – South Korea | 2016 – 7:25 min.

Eun-yi is preparing to cook a mackerel, but the death of the fish on the cutting board makes her uneasy. Is the fish’s death something we should take for granted?

Director’s Comment
This film is about the insights gained from a family’s obituary and, moreover, the importance of all living things, even those that end up on the cutting board.

Be Back by Park Euntae and Kim Taeyeon – South Korea | 2016 – 8:30 min.

A girl named Dada is waiting for her parents to pick her up from kindergarten. While waiting, she tries to draw a picture of her parents, but she erases and starts over again and again because she has a hard time remembering their faces. Several years later, she has grown up and become a busy worker just like her parents.

Director’s Comment
A lonely child waits for her parents to return from work, but society’s restrictions are inescapable. I intended to make the audience think about such situations by conveying the child’s feelings of loneliness.

Breathe by Ko Ma-eum – South Korea | 2015 – 2:37 min.

Nice walk, laid-back pace, peaceful rest, warm sunshine, and serene relaxation. As I breathe in daily lives, I feel alive with the realization of trifle but meaningful moments.

Director’s Comment
In our repetitive routines, when do we really get to realize that we are alive? I wanted to capture the emotion of liveness in the middle of composure, relaxation, and empty minds. With the main theme of breathing, I hope one can realize the feeling of aliveness through breathing in pause.

Cage by Pengpeng Du – China, US | 2015 – 4:26 min.

Life is liberty in a CAGE. CAGE represents a situation that is filled with a lot of constraints, or a habit or an addiction that is hard to get rid of. This project is to present a Chinese cultural and traditional visual style to audiences. On the other hand, CAGE tries to inspire them to recall their memory and consider what is the meaning of life to them individually.

Deer Flower by Kim Kangmin – South Korea, US | 2015 – 7:34 min.

In the summer of 1992, Dujung, an elementary student, goes to a farm in the suburbs with his parents. While his parents believe the expensive and rare specialty from the farm will strengthen their son’s body, Dujung suffers side effects.

Director’s Comment
The purpose of this project is for sharing director’s unique style and story based on real experience.

Entr’acte by Mohammad Reza Kheradmandan – Iran | 2016 – 5:33 min.

A sniperwhom shots children from above a war-torn city…

Giotto by Heo Joonseok – South Korea | 2016 – 24:59 min.

A man falls in love with a stuffed lion, but his moment of happiness doesn’t last long. He mistook the lion for a female because of the long hair. He leaves the lion after finding out that a lion with a mane is a male. But the man and the lion can’t forget each other.

Director’s Comment
It is ridiculous to look at the vast ocean of love through the tiny peep hole of genital-centrism.

Jungle Taxi by Kim Hakhyun – South Korea | 2016 – 7:44 min.

The taxi driver picks up a discomforting man in the jungle. The man wishes to die beside the ocean, but he survives. The taxi driver goes to pick him up again. When he arrives, his hand reaches for his concealed pistol.

Director’s Comment
It is a short story about roles and destinies that get mixed up.

In other words by Tal Kantor – Israel | 2015 – 5:56 min.

A man recalls a moment of a lost opportunity to communicate with his daughter. Their brief meeting after years undermines his world and renders his words meaningless.

Like a Parrot by Rohit Asocan – India | 2015 – 2:11 min.

The story isabout the emotional trauma a butcher’s boy undergoes during his first kill.

My Father’s Room by Jang Nari – South Korea | 2015 – 8:16 min.

She was abused by her father during childhood. Since he left, the pain and anger had begun to fade. One day, unexpectedly, she was struck by a revelation about her father’s life that cast her feelings about him into confusion.

Director’s Comment
Sometimes, family members can be worse than strangers. Despite this, it’s difficult to reject a blood relative. In this story, mutual hatred, and also pity, festers within a family, and the sore remains open. Regardless, they continue on.

My Secret Nest by Kim Eunjin – South Korea | 2015 – 12:31 min.

Sujin is in the second grade of elementary school, and there is a “dandruff monster” in her class. One day, she discovers dandruff in her own hair. When the other kids tease the dandruff monster, she stands up to them, but they picked on her as well. Even her best friend Yeji begins to keep her distance. Sujin becomes isolated, but she also begins to relate to the dandruff monster whether she likes it or not, making her feel more and more confused.

Director’s Comment
The complicated emotions felt by adults are shown through the eyes of a young child.

Nothing you need to see by Keigo Ito – Japan | 2015 – 3:38 min.

This animation expresses a contemporary issue. A young man turns his face inside out and become to see nothing. The man in a suit stuffs garbage in a young man’s face. And permissible amount become over. A young man metamorphoses something the man desires.

Overload by Kang Suhyun – South Korea | 2015 – 5:03 min.

A man misses his lover who died in an unexpected accident. After a long period in space, he is about to return to Earth when an inexplicable and impossible incident allows him to look back in time.

Director’s Comment
Overload: 1) A state of having too much work. 2) Strain on a device caused by exceeding its capacity.

Overload is a story that began with two ideas. “In a mentally overloaded state, how accurate is human memory?” and “Memories of our past are always beautified.” Also, the image of an object changing into a sticky liquid inspired this story.

Paper Bird by Jung Yu-kyung – South Korea | 2016 – 6:05 min.

Min-hee and Sun-chul meet in the library. Sun-chul gives paper cranes to his love as a sign of his affection. It’s an endless habit that he keeps even after getting married, and Min-hee is tired of it. She tries to escape, but Sun-chul catches her and folds her like a paper crane.

Director’s Comment
It is a story about a wife who cannot escape from her husband’s grasp.

Piano and Kid by Lee Hyunmi – South Korea | 2016 – 6:26 min.

To a child who doesn’t want to play the piano anymore, the piano looks like a monster that wants to eat him. But the piano follows the child and only wants to play cheerfully together like they did before…

Director’s Comment
In 2013, created serial illustrations A Piano and a Boy, a story about my drawings and me, and the animation is originated from it. I am eager to express the rhythmic relation between art and the artists, all creators have felt, similar to the attachment and the changing emotions between lovers.

Picnic by Moon Se-eun – South Korea | 2016 – 3:25 min.

A family of deer gets ready for a picnic. They are having a nice time in the forest, but suddenly the daughter gets hit by a car. A man steps out of the car and frowns at her body before driving away. The rest of the family stares helplessly at their dead daughter.

Director’s Comment
People need to know that animals they hit on the road were part of a happy animal family. I hope they feel some guilt about the road kill they create.

Planet Unknown by Shawn Wang – China | 2016 – 9:21 min.

At the end of the 21st century, mankind is facing a global resource depletion. Space Rovers are sent out to find potentially inhabitable planets.

Role Playing by Lee Hyeju – South Korea | 2015 – 4:00 min.

A couple that runs a chicken farm has a daughter. Having witnessed her parents’ cruelty against the chickens while growing up, the girl gets a rush from tormenting the chickens herself. One night, she is transformed into a chicken, and her parents, failing to recognize their daughter, show her the same cruelty they inflicted on the chickens.

Director’s Comment
The film criticizes man’s brutality against animals that are harvested as products and hopes for the liberation of the animals. I wanted to show what it would be like for a person to be on the receiving end of the cruelty and violence that the animals suffer.

Scapegoat by Gal Haklay, Shulamit Tajer – Israel | 2015 – 8:30 min.

Ben is struggling to find his place in the world. He has problems with his wife and he is a violent alcoholic who doesn’t care about anything. He even gets tossed out of a pub. When he has nowhere left to go, he finds his way to a place where he thinks he could belong – Azazel…

The Door People Live In by Ok Seyoung – South Korea | 2015 – 6:03 min.

At an unknown place, there are two pairs of glass doors where certain creatures are living in. The creatures in each door, which cannot go beyond their frames, desire to approach each other. However, their attempts to meet continuously fail due to the people who constantly open and close the doors.

Director’s Comment
I often used to imagine that in life, a huge external action might exist which I cannot do anything about, regardless of my will. A ‘door’ in a place has been brought as a metaphor of the situations when intentions and the following results are in conflict. I intended to make a story of continuous failures caused by external conditions, even though great efforts are made, like changing their forms in various ways to meet each other. Despite the attempts, external circumstances, in this case the moving door, keeps getting in the way and we have no control over it.

The Edge by Alexandra Averyanova – Russia | 2016 – 12:00 min.

An elderly woman lives at a small station. There’s not a single living creature for miles away. Every day, during many years, she is making the round of the metals. The only event in the woman’s life is a train that passes her station without a stop.

The Hole by Ko Eunbyul – South Korea | 2016 – 6:52 min.

One day, the girl punches a hole in the wall with her finger. She peeps into the other people’s room through the hole. Gradually, the girl begins to compare her life to the lives of others.

Director’s Comment
Like the girl in this film, many people peep into other people’s lives through social media and mass media. Many of them start to compare their own lives with the lives of others. Afterwards, they lose their own life and identity.

The Person with the Broadest Shoulders in the World by Kim Misu
South Korea, Japan | 2016 – 6:00 min.

At the park, a boy meets a man who has no face. He is shocked when he sees the faceless man, but when the man offers him a balloon the two of them become friends. A girl wrapped in a blanket watches them. How did the man lose his face? What kind of expression is he hiding?

Director’s Comment
The boy reads a story about a man who has the biggest shoulders in the world and is transformed into an island where the events take place. The boy, the man, and the girl wrapped in a blanket are all reflections of the filmmaker. The boy represents the filmmaker’s younger self who didn’t know much about the world and the faceless man’s childhood self. The girl with the blanket is a victim of her society’s othering and objectification – the expectations and assumptions that we have based on someone’s gender or nationality, and the prejudice that results from a failure to see others as human beings and equals. The man without a face is a spectator to the girl’s plight. Being unable to express his thoughts and opinions, he concealed his emotions until all expression vanished from his face. He couldn’t express himself because he was afraid of drawing unwanted attention and becoming ostracized from his social group. I believe that the people with the biggest shoulders are the active participants – male and female, Korean and foreigner, disabled and able bodied, myself and others. We may look different from each and come from different environments, but we are all human beings who live, or have lived, on Earth. If we can create a society where we can communicate while understanding and respecting each other’s differences, the world might be a happier place.

The Walkman by Kim Herian – South Korea | 2015 – 11:51 min.

An old man in his 90s walks into the park inside an apartment complex. Younger elderly men are playing Go in the park, but they won’t let the older man join them. The old man can only watch them. When he sits down on a nearby bench, he discovers a Walkman. After a moment’s hesitation, he puts the earphones in his ears and presses the reverse play button. Suddenly, the old man starts to move in reverse, and his life and the world move backwards.

Director’s Comment
The film tells the story of an old man born in Anyang in 1926 who lived through an era of rapid change. Through his story, the film shows the relationship between our physical body and the outside world. The main character shows the lives of the lower-middle class. He received a Japanese education, then he was sent off to war after Korea gained independence. In the period of rapid economic progress, he accepted everything and did as he was told, living as a tiny cog in the mechanism of society. The old man’s personal memories, intertwined with his memories of war, poverty, and the pain and sorrow of the Japanese colonial era, are shown along with a geographical basis in the animation. The warm texture of the oil pastel requires each image to be drawn by hand in an analog process that moves away from the efficiency of digital techniques. Time plays an important role in both the production process of the film and the story dealing with the past. The final scene of the animation involves a group photo. Like the images that are layered behind the foggy scene when the photograph is taken, the memories begin to fade, becoming idealized, edited, and mixed together.

Unfinished Tales: Fool’s Paradise by Hussam Ismail – Jordan | 2015 – 6:17 min.

Four soldiers in a hospital room destroyed mentally and physically trying to find hope to survive or at least one of them have hope.

Within Thy Walls by Omer Sharon, Daniella Schnitzer
Israel | 2015 – 7:17 min.

A Satire movie that criticize the daily life in Jerusalem. A city with a great gap between its symbolic and holy values to the “simple” people who are living in the movie is based on footage that we captured while we were wandering in the streets of Jerusalem.

To know more about the festival you can see the FESTIVAL PROFILE or go to the official website to know all the screening times and dates HERE.