Academy Award Qualifying Festival!

¡¡Huesca!!

Thrilled to announce that the Selection Committee of the Huesca International Film Festival has announced that the animation short film THE MAGICIAN, by Bogdan Muresanu, has been selected as a finalist to compete in the ‘International Competition’.

This 54th edition of this prestigious festival will take place in the city of Huesca from 5 to 13 June 2026.

The screening will take place at the historic and renovated Teatro Apolo in the Aragonese city.

THE MAGICIAN, also known as MAGICIANUL, had its world premiere at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival in France. Since then, it has been screened at around twenty film festivals that serve as a springboard to the Hollywood Oscars and the European Film Awards (EFA).

THE MAGICIAN is the latest film by Romanian director Bogdan Muresanu, winner of the European Film Academy Award and a recent Oscar SHORTLISTED for his acclaimed film CADOUL DE CRACIUN.

Synopsis:

Sulina, 1910. It is the inauguration of the first electric power station in this Romanian port city. In the jubilation of a modern and cosmopolitan crowd, Ilarion, a prestidigitator from another time, tries to play his last card.

Director’s Statement:

“I wanted to revive a bygone world and the technique of animation allowed me to recreate, from stills, the settings in which the action of the movie takes place, but I also wanted to get to the essence of the story. And here I think animation was a medium that suited my intention: not to illustrate the glory of a bygone world, through the fate of a once exuberant and cosmopolitan port, now reduced to the dimensions of a forgotten small town, but to represent the substance of the story I wrote many years ago,” says Bogdan Mureșanu.
“Film, especially animated film, which is supposed to be a total visual invention, has to produce an image that, at best, then hangs on the walls of those ‘dark corridors’ in the viewer’s mind.”, adds the director.

THE MAGICIAN is a co-production between Romania, Croatia and France.

Stay tuned. In a few days’ time, we will be announcing further successes for this hit European animated film on the international circuit of film festivals that serve as qualifiers for the Hollywood Oscars.