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Animated Documentary “Pelikan Blue” Wins Grand Prize in Leipzig

MTI-Hungary Today 2024.11.06.

László Csáki’s Pelikan Blue won the Golden Dove Award for the best feature-length animated film at the 67th DOK Leipzig Festival in Leipzig, Germany, last week, the National Film Institute (NFI) announced.

Pelikan Blue is a humorous, nostalgic tale of freedom and three good friends who forged international train tickets in the 1990s using blue indigo paper. “The film embodies the power of imagination that transcends physical, social, and political barriers and borders. It is about chasing dreams, exploration, friendship, and ingenuity.

While we do not think that forging tickets is the best way to make dreams come true, we appreciated the way the story is told, the visual language, and above all the light-hearted personal and historical honesty that the film conveys,”

said the festival jury, explaining their decision.

The Leipzig International Festival for Documentary and Animated Film is the world’s first event dedicated specifically to documentaries and animated films, held every autumn since 1955. Taking place in several cinemas throughout the city, the festival program includes over 200 screenings, including virtual reality films, a panorama section, special programs, and retrospectives. At the awards ceremony, which ended over the weekend, director László Csáki, line producer Cui Sissy, and Zsuzsanna Ács, the film’s colorist and the actor who played the live-action parts, were personally presented with their awards.

According to the NFI press release,

the first Hungarian animated documentary, Pelikan Blue, deals with the train ticket forgery scandal of the 1990s in an entertaining way, with elements of system criticism and heist film. The film is full of Hungarian hits from the era and features the actual characters speaking in their own voices.

Pelikan Blue had its world premiere at the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival and has since been invited to major international festivals such as the Annecy International Animation Film Festival, the Silk Road International Film Festival in Xi’an, China, the Hot Docs in Toronto, Canada, and the Filmtettfeszt in Cluj-Napoca (Kolozsvár), Romania.

The film is shortlisted for the European Film Awards for Best Documentary.

It has previously won awards at the Animix International Animation Film Festival in Tel Aviv, Cartoons On The Bay Festival in Pescara, DocsBarcelona, IFF Art Film Fest in Košice, Animafest in Zagreb, Animator Festival in Poznań, and most recently at Animest International Animation Film Festival in Bucharest.

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Via MTI, Featured image: Facebook/Kék Pelikan


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