Festival Favorites, Now Online: MOME Anim on Animation HUB
For the last 45 years, the Animation Department of Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design (MOME Anim) has been a leading creative workshop in Hungarian animation. Its students and graduates have earned international recognition, bringing home awards from festivals around the globe—from Cannes to Berlin, Ottawa to Hiroshima and even the Oscar shortlist.
MOME Anim offers a project-based education where students explore a wide range of animation techniques, develop their artistic voices, and build professional portfolios. The program mirrors the workflow of a real animation studio, fostering talent from the first spark of an idea all the way to festival management and distribution. Beyond teaching, the community is involved in international collaborations, research, and talent incubation, while also organizing festivals, exhibitions, and professional forums.
Rooted in Hungary’s rich animation tradition, MOME Anim sees itself as both a guardian and innovator of this heritage—continuously shaping the future of animation through bold artistic visions. This commitment is reflected in internationally acclaimed works such as today’s online premiere of Marcell Mostoha’s Avant (2020), Zenó Mira’s Fox Tossing (2022), and Nikolett Fábián’s Resting Fog (2021).
Avant meditates on space, presence, and energy. Through recurring visual motifs that dissolve and re-emerge, it explores the boundaries between form and formlessness. There is no conventional narrative—the film invites viewers into a fluid realm of perception and transformation.
A distilled visual poem, Avant lingers in the threshold between structure and the unknown. This four-minute, abstract animation, created as a graduation project at MOME Anim in 2020, received the Jury Prize at the Annecy International Animation Festival in 2021.
It’s not very common for someone to graduate from MOME with an experimental film. What prospects does a director who works in such a niche field have today?
I think that anyone working in an experimental spirit should also approach their career in that same way. If the filmmaking itself is not classical, then the path won’t be either, so you have to explore it much more specifically. Of course, it depends on many factors, and the type of experimental film you create has a big influence. Fortunately, Avant had very nice opportunities to be shown—I’m thinking of the Annecy Award, but also the many film festivals, museums and exhibitions where it appeared. MOME also played an essential role in this, I consider their post-graduate support for films extremely important.
Winning an award at the Annecy Festival with a diploma film is a big achievement! Have you felt any positive impact on your career?
Definitely, yes! I received many invitations from festivals, which provided a strong starting point and reference for my work. I also got requests from various institutions – one of the most surprising was the Centre Pompidou. However, I must also say that opportunities for animated films in the classical sense were not always available to me, given my very different approach.
We’re very curious: what are you working on at the moment?
I’ve recently finished a short film that will be distributed next year by Bonobostudio. It was created with analog technics on paper and I also composed the music for it. All I can say is that it became a very exciting musical collaboration. I worked with the voice of singer Orsolya Bacsa. The process took a long time, and I had to rethink many aspects along the way, but I am essentially satisfied with the result. I see this work as a personal breakthrough, pushing beyond my own boundaries.
This summer, I joined the Zsolnay Light Festival with an animation projected on the wall of the M21 Gallery. Together with my painter friend Ákos Marton, we opened his exhibition with an audio-visual performance. Currently, I am in Viborg, Denmark, where I exhibited a 3-channel video installation combined with a musical performance in a water tower during the animation film festival. And finally, a little behind-the-scenes secret: this installation and performance will also be presented in the Brønshøj Water Tower in Copenhagen this October.
Through its cruel depiction of the human–animal relationship, Fox Tossing exposes some of the darkest corners of the human psyche. Told through alternating perspectives, the film contrasts the decadent feasts and ruthless entertainments of aristocrats with the fear and suffering of caged animals—creatures trembling and howling as they face their fate.
Shot in stark black and white, the film’s brutal imagery is set against the refined elegance of Tomaso Albinoni’s baroque music, whose idyllic tones clash unsettlingly with the violence on screen. This tension creates a haunting atmosphere where beauty and brutality exist side by side, compelling the viewer to confront the disturbing realities of power, cruelty, and control.
For his film, Zénó Mira has been nominated for the 2025 Emile Award in two categories: Best Student Film and Best Character Design and Backgrounds in Short Film.
It’s been a few years since you graduated with your highly successful Fox Tossing. Could you tell us briefly what has happened since then?
After graduating, I mostly focused on developing my own project while also participating in several collaborations. I worked as an animator and layout artist on a friend’s folk horror short film, Lightbringer, and also created a music video. Last year, I directed a short film for a Hungarian Jewish organization (EMIH), which—together with the work of two of my peers—will be presented in an exhibition this October.
Your artistic world is very unique, dominated by stark blacks in both your films and graphics. Do you have any plans to bring color into this world in the future?
Graphic expressiveness is very important to me, which is why the high-contrast black-and-white world has always felt natural. I don’t rule out the use of color, but I see it more as a dramaturgical tool: I use it only when it truly adds to the content or provides rhythm to the composition. In my next project, colors will appear, but in a limited way.
You were recently nominated for two Emile Awards. How much do you think international awards can help in making sure your next film is realized in Hungary?
I am very grateful for the nomination; it truly feels like a great honor. I hope that this international recognition will, at least to some extent, help me bring my next film to life here in Hungary. I also sincerely hope that my upcoming short film will reach those to whom it can speak, offering comfort or sparking reflection.
Set in a fictional, secluded bath at dusk, Resting Fog leads us into the fragile space between memory and dissolution. Through drawn animation and digital effects, poetically fragmented images drift into view, linger, and then dissolve—like thoughts at the edge of consciousness.
As daylight fades, so too do the vestiges of lived experience. The bath is never entirely literal, but resembles the inner architecture of the mind, a place where every memory is both preserved and vulnerable. Resting Fog is a meditation on the way memory mutates—on our attempts to hold agency over what we have lived, and on how sound, light, shape and feeling inevitably slip away.
Since its premiere, Resting Fog has traveled to nearly thirty festivals worldwide, earning seven awards, including the George Pal Award for the Most Promising Hungarian Talent in Animation.
Your diploma film had a beautiful festival run, accompanied by many awards! Which festival was the best experience for you?
I consider myself very lucky with the festival journey of the film. It was screened at more than 70 festivals, mostly in student and experimental film categories. Perhaps the most special experience was the Sarajevo Film Festival because of its cultural diversity. The nearly week-long festival offered a strong selection of regional premieres from around 20 countries, along with a wealth of professional programs held in truly exciting venues.
In your opinion, how much can festivals today help filmmakers enter the international animation scene?
In many cases, the festival circuit can serve as a great springboard. For example, the world premiere of Resting Fog at the Annecy Festival was exactly such a stepping stone. It developed into a longer “circulation process”: over the following one or two years, I received numerous invitations—some festivals even programmed the film into their own thematic selections. It also led to a few work opportunities, offers for residency programs, and perhaps most importantly, several producers showed interest in my next project.
Resting Fog is a beautiful “state-of-mind film,” where spaces and moods take center stage. In a future project, would you like to continue in this direction, or would you be interested in exploring more story- and character-driven filmmaking?
Based on the positive feedback from the Resting Fog tour, I’ve come to a clear understanding of what my “task” in animation is. I will continue experimenting with how to represent different mental processes, stepping outside the framework of classical narrative. Through these mental “journeys,” I want to help viewers shift into another state of consciousness. My next short film has already been in development for some time, and I’m really looking forward to focusing fully on directing again.