16. StopTrik International Film Festival: 161 Animations, Dead Media, and 5 Days of Non-Stop Excitement in Maribor

StopTrik, now in its 16th edition, celebrates stop motion animation over five days of diverse programming and 161 animated films, while encouraging reflection on social, cultural, and political phenomena. This year, the festival once again offers a wide range of events, including the International Competition Program, featuring 41 animated films distinguished either by exceptional stop motion craftsmanship, experimental approaches to animation and a profound understanding of film's ability to convey meaningful, sensitive, and valuable stories.

This year's central theme of retrospectives and panels, DEAD MEDIA, draws on Bruce Sterling's 1995 concept, which views the disappearance of artistic and communication technologies as an inevitable byproduct of the accelerating pace of technological progress.

Ahead of the festival, children can take part in a stop motion animation workshop led by Jan Svenšek. During the festival, Miha Reja will host AD-HOC LAB. workshop for anyone wishing to discover the basics of stop motion animation. The professional Workshot 2.0, expanded and refined over recent years, combines critical literacy, concept development and narrative-building writing with Max Hattler, and hands-on stop motion filmmaking with Moïa Jobin-Paré. The festival also continues its extensive film education program for children and young people, strengthens collaborations with partner festivals through screenings for secondary school students, and presents a three-part competitive stop motion program for children featuring 18 animated films.

The exhibition PRINTED MOTION – From Digital Sculpture to 3D Printing showcases replicas of created objects and characters alongside the creative process itself, from its technological foundations to its artistic realization. To shift attention back to the time-intensive craft of handmade art, visitors are also invited to immerse themselves in Vuk Jevremović's exhibition of paintings and hand-crafted film frames.

As always, the festival offers opportunities to hear firsthand insights into the world of stop motion production through talks and special events. Festival evenings will once again feature lively entertainment, including a dynamic music program with visual performances and an animation battle.

HERE you can find full festival program, including links to event descriptions.

All events are free of charge.

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All events are free of charge. 〰️

Stop motion is back in Maribor. From 23 to 27 September, the 16th StopTrik International Film Festival will present 161 films made predominantly in a variety of stop motion techniques, alongside works that expand the possibilities of animated cinema – because our love for animation knows no bounds!

This year’s Official Selection comprises four sections: the international competitions Stop Motion Animation (29 films), Stop Motion Animation for Children (18 films) and Borderlands (12 experimental films combining stop motion with other cinematic forms), as well as the non-competitive Panorama programmes Open Frame (16 films that don’t sweat the technique) and Dead Media (11 films responding to the festival's 2026 theme). As always, Maribor Audiences, both children and adults, will award the festival’s Grand Prix and competition prizes, while the Maribor Student Jury will select its own winners.

The focus of this year’s retrospectives is Dead Media, inspired by a concept introduced by Bruce Sterling in 1995 to describe obsolete technologies that once shaped how we communicated and imagined the world. From shadow theatre and magic lanterns to analogue photography and VHS tapes, these forgotten media remind us that the history of technology is also a history of culture. StopTrik approaches this idea not as nostalgia, but as an invitation to rediscover animation’s relationship with disappearing formats and to ask what remains alive when the devices themselves have vanished.

The retrospective Dead Media: Fleeting Matters brings together films that consciously engage with obsolete or fading forms of animation, inviting viewers to slow down, decode and embrace the fragile pleasures of disappearing media. The second programme, Dead Media: In and Out Misinformation Society, extends the metaphor into today’s information landscape, exploring how animation reflects on propaganda, polarization of the public sphere, algorithmic communication and the growing mediatization of violence. Both retrospective programmes will have reprise screenings at the Slovenian Cinematheque in winter 2027.

The exhibitions and discussions will continue these conversations from different perspectives. PRINTED MOVEMENT – From Digital Sculpting to 3D Printing reveals the journey from digital models to handcrafted animation objects, while VUK JEVREMOVIĆ’S HUMAN GESTURES exposes the artist’s paintings and original frames from his films in order to hold onto the slow, the manual and the laborious. The panel Dead Media Spirit in Audio/Visual Culture invites Thomas Renoldner (Austria) and Claudia Munksgaard-Palmqvist (Denmark) to examine how experimental animation transforms alongside changing technologies. The journalists Kristina Božič (Slovenia) and Boris Vasev (Slovenia) along with Assal Rad (Iran), a historian and the author of "The State of Resistance: Politics, Culture, and Identity in Modern Iran", will speak at the panel Mainstream Media in the Era of Genocides addressing the relationship between journalism, public information and contemporary conflicts.

StopTrik's Solidarity Programme, which grew out of screenings and conversations supporting animation artists from Palestine and Ukraine, has become an essential part of the Festival's identity. This year we turn our attention to war-torn Sudan, inviting audiences to encounter first-hand perspectives through the hybrid feature-length documentary Khartoum (directed by Anas Saeed, Rawia Alhag, Ibrahim Snoopy, Timea M. Ahmed, Phil Cox) and conversations between one of the directors, Rawia Alhag, and the visual anthropologist, Prof. Ana Sarah Lunaček Brumen (University of Ljubljana)

Our festival partners once again bring remarkable programmes to Maribor. The friends from Beirut Animation Nights present a showcase of Arab Animation. The Animest Bucharest uncovers their Carte Blanche and shares their signature animated scare of Creepy Animation Night. Animateka contributes programmes for younger audiences, including the Slovenian co-produced feature Tales from the Magic Garden. Meanwhile, curators Nadya Svirskaia of the nomadic Shcha 7 Sec Animation Festival and Krste Gospodinovski of Flipbook Film Festival will meet in the ever-unpredictable Curators Battle.

The Festival remains as committed to making animation as it is to screening it. Children will create their first films with Jan Svenšek (Slovenia); Miha Reja (Slovenia) will lead the open AD-HOC LAB; and the flagship Workshot 2.0, organised with eight European art schools and the University of Nova Gorica School of Arts, will bring together emerging filmmakers under the Dead Media-themed workshop, guided by mentors Max Hattler (Germany / Hong Kong) and Moïa Jobin-Paré (Canada).

Talking about animation is a fundamental StopTrik experience too. Max Hattler and Moïa Jobin-Paré’s works will be insightfully introduced at the Imagining the Authors screening-and-talk event. And you can meet all the attending filmmakers at the post-screenings Q&A. Importantly, we also welcome everyone to join Trik Show, the Saturday&Sunday sessions with the filmmakers from the Official Selection who uncover their tricks, share obstacles and solutions, and discuss in detail their unique approaches to stop motion.

Come and join us to watch, discuss, and celebrate.

And cheer with us: long live animation!