TICKETS ON SALE NOW!

Advance tickets are now on sale for all Portland and Eugene screenings. Select your favorite topic, or treat yourself to an all-festival pass and experience the whole five-day extravaganza!

Passes will be available for pick-up at the theater box office beginning on the first day of the festival.

CLICK a color bar for tickets. Scroll down to read event descriptions.

CLICK image for Festival Program PDF

PORTLAND:  May 10-14

EUGENE:  May 19-21

NW Animation Fest Passes
The Northwest Animation Festival showcases visionary worlds of fantasy, unforgettable stories, and outlandish oddities from around the globe. See the year’s best short films, selected from over 1100 submissions. Explore special topics, talk with filmmakers, and play at late night parties. If you’re an animation-lover, this is the must-see event of 2017!

HouseSpecial: Animating Portland
HouseSpecial is the Portland animation studio best known for bringing M&Ms and Planters Peanuts commercials to life. Watch as their world-class team of producers, directors, artists, and animators tackle a new stop-motion project live on stage!

After the presentation, join us for Meet the Animation Tribe! — a free networking party directly across the street at The Magnolia wine bar.

Oregon Animation Magic   (free show!)
This new half-hour special from OPB’s Oregon Art Beat features rare interviews and animation from Northwest indie icons and industry heavyweights. Get a behind-the-scenes look at how Oregon animators make their magic, learn about our region’s unique history, and hear from the talents who make Oregon one of the animation capitals of the world. Presented in partnership with OPB. Q&A to follow. FREE and open to the public. All ages welcome.

International Spectacular #1
Friday evening kicks off a three-night extravaganza of amazing international shorts. Selected from over 1100 submissions, this panoramic variety show offers profound and playfully peculiar delights to satisfy nearly every taste.

International Spectacular #2
NW Animation Fest’s parade of astonishing short films continues on Saturday night with a second collection of this year’s very best work. Selected from over 1100 submissions, the evening includes remarkable stories from China, Russia, France, Israel, Croatia, Spain, and more. Watch as national boundaries fall away, and the reign of unfettered imagination begins.

International Spectacular #3
This year’s NW Animation Fest concludes with an explosive cabaret of cartoons, digital delights, and show-stopping stop-motion. Selected from a pool of over 1100 submissions, you can trust that we’ve saved a few of our most favorite films for the big Sunday finale.

Exploding Mind! Abstract/Experimental
Throw out the rules of traditional filmmaking! Inspired animation architects build hovering fourth-dimensional forms. Morphing imaginations teeter between the psychedelic and psychotic. Spiritual insights beyond the grasp of words coalesce into truly original aesthetic experience. Dizzying but never dull — do you dare touch the exploding mind?

Family Friendly
Go on a time-traveling adventure to a capture a dinosaur, play with alien children on another planet, and romp with the forest animals in winter’s first snow. Savvy adult filmgoers and kids discovering indie animation for the first time will both enjoy the Northwest Animation Festival’s popular Family Friendly show.

World Odyssey: Globetrotting by Film
Explore foreign countries, as revealed through animated films! Taste other cultures, hear different voices, and feel what it’s like to live in another place. Cinematic adventurers will make stops in China, Germany, Mexico, Haiti, Iran, Latvia, and the Netherlands. This year, we also give special attention to Syria. We’ll hear from a young man caring for friends and family during the current crisis, first-hand accounts from escaping refugees, and about the hurdles they’ve faced while trying to reach sanctuary.

Strange & Sexy
Take a wild romp through the jungles of psyche and sexuality! This uninhibited collection of shorts plunges into the themes of lust and liberation, deviant desire and ecstatic enlightenment. Through an animator’s eyes, realize the beauty of the human body — and then twist your brain around the bizarrely bawdy.

Fantastic Worlds: Sci Fi & Fantasy
Intergalactic space travel! Strange, alien life forms! Mad scientists, mutants, and mayhem! Fantastic Worlds delivers five outstanding short films about interplanetary travel — plus one astonishing, hour-long adventure to the outer limits of imagination: Nova Seed.

Northwest Animators Showcase
The Northwest indie animation scene is super-charged with creative energy. Maybe it’s the rain inspiring us to sit down and make art? Dig into the mystery with this diverse collection of short films from Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia. After the screening, stay for a special 30min “Meet the Animators” panel discussion.

network: Meet the Animation Tribe!
Schmooze with friends both old and new, talk shop, and trade business cards. Whether you’re an industry veteran, a freelancer looking for gigs, or just arrived in Portland yesterday — come celebrate opening night with the local animation tribe!

party: Let’s Make Animation NOW
Have a drink, then try making animation yourself. Attendees are provided with sharpie markers and lightboxes. Make twelve drawings, then pass them on to the next person. At the end of the night, all of the drawings are assembled… And we’ll have made a hilarious, chaotic, short film together. Organized by ASIFA-Portland, a chapter of the International Animation Society.

party: Animation in Video Games
Journey into the world of games animation with the Portland Indie Game Squad! Watch or play through the unique animation styles of several popular independently-made games.