10/07/2025
ANIMAKOM
(2017 – 2024)
It’s the small things
Dear friends, colleagues, artists, programmers, workers of the international animation film community; dear animation fans, the day has come:
through this message we inform you that, after 8 editions, the Bilbao International Animation Community Film Festival – ANIMAKOM FEST has reached the end of its journey. As in cinema, every great story must come to an end, and the story of Animakom, although shorter than that of other festivals, has given us many more joys than we could ever have dreamed of when we started back in 2017.
Each edition has been a great challenge; we have faced, as a small festival, countless difficulties, which we have managed to solve year after year. We have survived a pandemic. And it is thanks to you that, from today, we will not remember the work done as a sacrifice but rather as an act of love reciprocated towards you, who have made it so worthwhile. ANIMAKOM was born as a festival deeply committed to the artists, to each one of you who make up the wonderful international animation community, and it’s been a great pleasure to have been able to gather every year to celebrate your work and, of course, friendship. Life.
We leave with our hearts full of anecdotes and moments, of new and not so new faces that have passed through Bilbao, and with the satisfaction of having dedicated 8 years to the diffusion of those works that perhaps go unnoticed in other festivals but deserve the same attention as the most celebrated ones. We feel especially proud to have been the place where new young artists who had not yet had the opportunity to join the community and who, unfortunately, due to the nature of artistic work, had been isolated for a long time, have got to share their art and make new friends and soulmates. We leave with a smile, hoping it will also be yours, and with hundreds of stories that will forever remain in our memory.
It is our desire that the fuse lit by Animakom during these last years does not stop. We hope new festivals have the opportunity to be born and consolidate, and we encourage public institutions and sponsors to support them. Small things are also worthwhile. Or, perhaps, it’s the small things that are really worth it.
We will continue to see each other, friends, in any corner of the world to which our passion for animation takes us. That place may not be Bilbao anymore, but it will undoubtedly be, in your company, a magical place.
See you soon, dear friends.
Farewell, Animakom.
Let’s keep it rolling.
