Irish Film: Coda Picks up SXSW Best Animated Short Film Award

In more good news for the Irish film industry this week, Coda, a short Irish animation funded by Bord Scannán na hÉireann/the Irish Film Board (IFB), RTÉ and the Arts Council, has won a prize for Best Animated Short Film at the prestigious South by SouthWest (SXSW) film festival in Austin, Texas. It 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 dedicated 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.

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. It is directed by Alan Holly whose previous short film, Old Fangs, which he co-directed, was selected for Sundance Film Festival.

This award follows the news just announced that the Irish language short film Rúbaí was selected to have its International Premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York next month. The film tell 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.

Coda was produced under the Frameworks animation scheme which is funded by the IFB, RTÉ and the Arts Council. RÚBAÍ was funded through the IFB Irish language short film scheme Gearrscannain.