According to Kanoon General Directorate for Public Relations and International Affairs, four animation artists from other countries along with one artist from Iran are judging for the international section of Tehran 12th International Animation Festival. The CIFEJ section is judged by one judge from Iran and one from Germany.

George Schwizgebel, Koji Yamamura, Marco Bellano, Bulent Kucukerdogan, Nazanin Sobhan Sarbandi are the judges at the international section. At CIFEJ section, Bulent Kucukerdogan and Kaveh Kanani are judging for the Tehran 12th International Animation Festival.  

George Schwizgebel, from Switzerland, has eye-catching collection of animations in his profile. “The Flight of Icarus”, 1974, is the start of activities including twenty films and numerous awards from prestigious international festival. “Ride to the Abyss”, 1992, is known as one of the best animations in the history of the world animation. He won “Lifetime Achievement Award”, Animafest, Zagreb, 2020.

Koji Yamamura is a member of the Academy of Awards (Oscar), and a university professor at Tokyo University of the Arts. “Mount Head”, an animation, 2002, was Oscar nominee. It won six international grand prizes. It is selected as one of the 100 top movies in 20th century. “A County Doctor”, an animation, 2007, has won six grand prizes and more than 140 awards from international festivals.

In the 2021 poll, Yamamura is the second best animation director listed among the 25 directors of world for short animations in the last 25 years.

Marco Bellano, PhD, teaches History of Animation and is research fellow at the Department of Cultural Heritage of the University of Padua, Italy. He also teaches Digital and Interactive Media. He has written articles, book chapters, monographs about animation and film music (Václav Trojan, Music Composition in Czech Animated Films, CRC Publications, 2019; Allegro non Troppo: Bruno Bozzetto’s Animated Music; Bloomsbury, 2020). In 2014, the SAS-Society for Animation Studies assigned him the Norman McLaren-Evelyn Lambart Award for the Best Scholarly Article.

Bulent Kucukerdogan is born in Braunschweig, Germany. He studied French Language Literature, and MA in Film Directing at Istanbul University. He has PhD in Cinema Studies. He has written many articles and books about editing in cinema. He is the founder and the first director of the Association of Southeast European Film Schools and a member of the European Film Academy. He is the director of the Film and Television Department and a professor at the Faculty of Communication at Hasan Kalyoncu University in Gaziantep, Turkey. It is worth mentioning that in the 12th Tehran International Animation Festival, he is the judge of international and CIFEJ sections.

Nazanin Sobhan Sarbandi is a graduate of Faculty of Fine Arts from the University of Tehran and has been cooperating with Kanoon since 1973. Directing animations, writing, designing, painting of the background, making promotional animations exist in her profile. She has made animations such as “Footprint”, “Carpet”, “Unity”, “Address”, “Zero”, “Kind Moon”, “The Shadow which Turned to the Light”, and “The Cycling Wind”.

Kaveh Kanani is a graduate of animation directing from the IRIB University, a member of the International Association of Children and Adolescent Filmmakers, a producer and director of animation. He has started his artistic and professional activities since 1997. He has a long history in the field of animation, children books illustration, graphics and motion graphics. As a director, he has participated in several domestic and foreign festivals and has won many awards.

According to this news, the judging of the international section and CIFEJ section of the Animation Festival will be done online and the judges will judge 221 works (36 Iranian works submitted to the International Competition and 175 foreign works submitted to the International Competition) from 46 countries.

According to this report, out of 36 Iranian works that made it to the final stage of the International Competition section of 12th Tehran International Animation Festival, 15 short films, 3 children and adolescent works, 3 experimental works, 4 television works, 4 promotional works, 1 feature film and 6 works by Iranian students who qualify for the International Student Competition will be judged.

Also, out of 175 foreign works submitted to the international competition section of this period of the animation festival, 83 short films, 26 children and adolescent works, 6 experimental works, 5 television works, 5 commercial works, 48 ​​student works and 2 feature works will be judged.

Tehran 12th International Animation Festival is held from March 6 to 10, 2022 at Kanoon Center for Cultural-Artistic Creations.