ETER Anima Festival ETER Anima Festival was created as a continuation of the StopTrikfestival that took place in Łódź for fourteen editions and built a space here for stop motion animation, auteur cinema, and meetings with filmmakers from Poland and around the world. ETER grows out of this history, but opens it up more widely. It preserves an attentiveness to form, materiality, and hand-crafted work, while expanding the programme to include all forms of animated film.

Today, animation no longer fits within a single technique. It can be made from puppets, drawings, plasticine, light, code, digital imagery, collage, or a completely unexpected experiment. ETER was created to show this diversity and to set the conversation about animation in motion again, presenting it as one of the most distinctive languages of contemporary cinema.

The name ETER refers to something invisible, yet perceptible. To the space where image meets movement, and technique meets emotion. In animation, it is precisely this elusive moment that makes still elements come to life. That is why ETER is, for us, a symbol of the energy that brings film to life and connects different languages of animation into one festival story.

The festival combines respect for tradition with curiosity about new forms. On the one hand, it returns to what defined the strength of StopTrik for many years: stop motion animation, the materiality of the image, and cinema created frame by frame. On the other hand, it opens up to computer animation techniques, original visual explorations, films for children, feature-length films, short forms, and works that escape simple categories.

The ETER programme will include film competitions, screenings of animated films from Poland and around the world, meetings with filmmakers, workshops, masterclasses, and events for young audiences. The festival aims to be a place for professionals, students, artists, families, cinephiles, and everyone who believes that animation can speak about the world just as powerfully as live-action cinema, and sometimes even more powerfully.

ETER is not only a film showcase. It is a story about how an image begins to live. About how movement is born from stillness, emotion from matter, and an entire world from a single frame. It is a festival for those who want to look more closely, discover new languages of cinema, and see where imagination can lead.