Hungarian animation was one of the premium export items of Hungarian culture for nearly 30 years, from the 1960s onwards, during the Kádár era. Up until the change of regime in 1989, the animators of Central Europe picked up dozens of top awards at festivals around the world. In the member states of the East bloc, the animation film was treated as a kind of intellectual ‘baby brother’ to the live action film and found itself less under the microscope of political censors.  Pannónia Film Studio, in Budapest, had grown into one of the largest animation studios in Europe by the early 1980s. Between 1973 and 1989, a total of 23 full-length animation films were produced. At that time, the number of people working at the studio had ballooned to nearly 300, and in addition to the Budapest centre, two provincial cartoon studios were established in Kecskemét and in Pécs. At the film festival, you can explore a selection of award-winning auteur animated short films made during the three decades of the ‘golden age’ of Hungarian animation at Pannónia Film Studio and at Kecskemétfilm Studio.