Message from Festival Director

On behalf of HIROSHIMA 2012, I would like to express my heartfelt thanks to all of you for submitting your entries to our festival.

The catch phrase of Hiroshima 2012 is “All Creation Glowing! Animation! Vivid Expression!”
For our official poster, we adopted a beautiful painting by Nobuhiro Aihara expressing a great passion toward life.

As we exist in the natural world, accepting both its gentle and harsh elements, we all live together strongly by supporting each other mutually.
This also applies to Hiroshima, which was rebuilt and stands today through warm thoughts and continued support from all over the world. We are also encouraged by all your kindness to the recovery of Eastern Japan. In order to express our sincere gratitude, we are now making every effort to organize a high quality festival HIROSHIMA 2012.

I hope that our festival will serve as a venue for international cross-cultural exchanges and understandings through animation media. And, I sincerely hope that the festival will be a platform for raising your business potentials for making plans, productions and distributions, as well as to contribute to the development and betterment of animation art culture widely.

We are very much looking forward to your participation in HIROSHIMA 2012 from August 23rd to 27th this summer !

Dear Friends,

It is already almost a year since the Eastern Japan earthquake and tsunami disaster last March.
With your warm and encouraging support from all over the world, we are now about to make a new start this spring. We sincerely appreciate your continued kind thoughts and aid toward our country.
In Hiroshima, twigs of cherry trees have changed their color into pale pink, waiting for blossoms. And we, the festival team, are expecting to the budding of new talents, and also respecting great masters, we are looking forward to receiving many entries for competition.
We truly hope that our festival HIROSHIMA 2012 itself will serve as an efficient venue for international cross-cultural exchange as well as for expanding many positive business talks, and we sincerely hope to contribute to the development of animation art culture widely.
We are very much looking forward to your participation in HIROSHIMA 2012 !

Dear Friends,

Happy New Year 2012 !
It is our festival year !
With your warm support and friendship, we have been able to keep our hope and courage to move forward, in spite of the very difficult situation after the earthquake and tsunami disaster last year.
I am very pleased to say that our preparation for HIROSHIMA 2012 is making a good progress.
Looking forward to welcoming you in Hiroshima in August !

Sayoko Kinoshita
Festival Director

Dear Friends,

Since the Eastern Japan earthquake and tsunami disaster, we have been receiving great energy and encouragement from all of you around the world, supporting our efforts toward the recovery. We sincerely appreciate your heartfelt thoughts and aid.

We not only experienced the terror of natural disaster, but also the horror of man-made disaster caused by nuclear power plants. While endeavoring to recover from the damage, we realized clearly that human beings are equal under all conditions, having only one precious life, and cooperating with each other to live. Also, we realized that art and culture has the power to unite our minds and make us feel positive to move forward.
The city of Hiroshima, pursuing everlasting peace without nuclear fear, firmly plans to continue promoting international cross-cultural exchange and understanding through the development of animation art culture.

On behalf of HIROSHIMA 2012 Festival Office, I am very much looking forward to receiving many high quality entries from around the world. We, the festival team, will take pleasure in working hard behind the scenes so that many people can make new friends, meet with old friends and enjoy the festival days next August.
We are greatly looking forward to your participation in HIROSHIMA 2012 !

Sincerely yours,

Sayoko Kinoshita
Festival Director

Dear Friends,

On behalf of Hiroshima International Animation Festival, I would like to extend our sincere condolences and deepest sympathy to the victims of the recent Tohoku-Pacific Ocean earthquake and tsunami in Japan.
I deeply respect and appreciate all the rescue people for their ceaseless hard work, and truly hope that we will find the way for recovery as soon as possible.

At the same time, I would like to express my heartfelt gratitude to so many animation people who kindly sent us encouraging messages from all around the world since 3.11.
With your strong support, we have already started preparing the next and the 14th edition HIROSHIMA 2012. Foreseeing our bright future, we would like to make every effort continuously for the development of animation art culture, which we love so much and believe in its importance and effectiveness as an art media.
Together with all of you, we plan to hold another high quality festival, full of creativity, full of initiatives, full of enthusiasm and full of friendship, under the common spirit of Hiroshima City and ASIFA that animation art will serve as an essential tool for the better understanding between different cultures.

Looking forward to receiving your entries to HIROSHIMA 2012, and hope to welcome you in Hiroshima in August 2012 !!!