A short Irish animation called CODA has won a prize for Best Animated Short Film at the prestigious SXSW Film Festival in Austin, Texas.
CODA premiered at the festival this week, along with Terry McMahon’s new feature film, Patrick’s Day, and Lenny Abrahamson’s new film, Frank.
Directed by Alan Holly, CODA is the culmination of two years of painstaking work by a small team of animation artists. The film tells the story of a lost soul who stumbles drunkenly through the city. In a park, death finds him and shows him many things.
Holly’s previous short film, Old Fangs, which he co-directed, had been selected for the Sundance Film Festival.
CODA has been funded by the Irish Film Board (IFB), RTÉ and the Arts Council under the Frameworks animation scheme.
This nine-minute, hand-drawn animated film is voiced by Brian Gleeson (Standby, The Stag, Love/Hate) and Orla Fitzgerald (The Wind that Shakes the Barley).
It was selected for SXSW out of 4,249 short film applications.
This award follows the news that Irish-language short film Rúbaí has been selected to have its international premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York next month.
The film tells the story of a little girl, Rúbaí, who with the Holy Communion looming, declares she’s an atheist, which bamboozles her teacher, her mother and the parish priest.
