This year, the international animation film festival celebrates a quarter of a century of enthusiasm for animated films. Once again, the focus is on bold, experimental, playful, and rebellious animated works by women and/or genderqueer artists. In conversation, the festival team provides insight into the beginnings and developments of the festival, talks about animation as a rebellious medium, about social upheavals, autobiographical storytelling, and the special role of the Austrian animation scene. In addition, the three reveal what anniversary highlights and program focuses await the audience this year—and why shared spaces like this are more important than ever right now.

HERE , you can go directly to the movie recommendations from the KINO VOD CLUB the end of the article.

The Tricky Women Tricky Realities festival, which is tailored to, for, and with women and/or genderqueer artists, is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year. Congratulations! Waltraud, what was the original impetus for starting this festival, and how has the festival and its focus changed over time?

Since 1992, we have been organizing festivals focusing on films by women, driven by the desire to make images and voices visible that otherwise receive too little attention—and to interweave them with civil society organizations and initiatives so that films become lively encounters, content becomes dialogue, and artistic impulses become lasting alliances.When we discovered animated film, it was like opening up a world full of diversity and power—drawn, collaged, inscribed on film strips, and scratched, boundlessly free. Animation appeared to us as a medium that was not only capable of expressing the most complex emotions, but also of conveying the most profound ideas. When we discovered animated film, it was like opening up a world full of diversity and power—drawn, collaged, inscribed and scratched into film strips, boundlessly free. Animation seemed to us to be the perfect medium for a different narrative: here, role models could be dissolved, perspectives shifted, and alternative worlds made visible. A space for poetic, subversive, and tender counter-designs.

We realized early on that it's not just about presentation, but also about exchange, discourse, and promoting structures for visibility and participation. Today, we see the festival as an international platform for women and/or genderqueer artists—a place of artistic freedom, networking, and solidarity.

With social developments in the gender debate, has the way the festival is perceived and the audience you reach also changed?

What was once often seen as a niche project and a deliberate counter-statement to a male-dominated film industry is now perceived as a relevant cultural space and feminist network. At the same time, our audience has been diverse from the very beginning—across all generations. Especially in times of backlash, the festival offers a place where different perspectives can be seen and negotiated artistically. The focus on women and/or genderqueer artists is not only programmatic, but also a clear stance: we address issues of gender justice and structural inequality from an artistic perspective and are thus perceived as an important platform both nationally and internationally.

The festival has the subtitle Tricky Realities. How important is the reference to social and political upheavals in the programming for you?

Since 2001, Tricky Women Tricky Realities has been working at the intersection of animation art, cinema culture, and civic engagement. Its goal has been and continues to be to create diverse feminist spaces for meeting, networking, solidarity, and learning, opening up opportunities for mutual professional, creative, political, and social support. In this way, the festival contributes to the historicization, theorization, and further development of feminist discourse in a self-organized manner. The name of the festival was changed from Tricky Women to Tricky Women Tricky Realities in 2019 to emphasize the festival's position at the intersection of animation and civil society work. It has always been important to the festival to understand animation as a medium that connects with the lived experiences of women and/or genderqueer people and enables collective engagement with these experiences.

What makes animated films so interesting for you?

British animation artist Vicky Smith describes Tricky Women Tricky Realities as "striving for the fantastic vision of imagining a world that is different from the one we currently live in." Film critic Amanda Barbour writes about the festival: "Tricky Women Realities reclaims animation's place as an aesthetically innovative, semantically provocative movement that challenges prevailing notions of what 'is' by dramatizing what 'could be.'" In doing so, both highlight the great potential of animation, which we also work with: not only the potential to rearrange familiar narrative structures, question norms, and break with dominant narratives and expectations. The festival is full of stories and lived experiences that illustrate current urgencies and dare to imagine a world different from the one we currently live in.

What themes and narrative styles particularly strike you in current animated works?

Animation has an extraordinary ability to find languages for inner and outer worlds, to make them accessible, to connect them with each other and with an audience. Many filmmakers are using this strength in their current work to make (auto)biographical narratives—personal experiences and memories—accessible to others. In the 2026 festival edition, the Artist Talk format is dedicated to this process of negotiation between closeness and distance that underlies (auto)biographical storytelling, bringing together filmmakers who approach this fine line between privacy and public life from a feminist perspective. However, exploring "the self" – one's own experiences and the desire to define and record them from one's own perspective – is nothing new in animated film. Animation has long been used by women and/or genderqueer people as a way to to explore the self, to experience it in all its ambiguity and constant transformation and reinvention, and thus to historicize it beyond external definitions. To celebrate the anniversary, Tricky Women Tricky Realities presents works from 1973 to 2025 as part of the anniversary program FLICKERING SELVES, which develop sensitive self-portraits through material-based animation.

To get you in the mood for the festival, we are showing a program of short films by Austrian filmmakers. What traditions and special features characterize Austrian animated filmmaking? Are there any examples of this in the program?

Austrian animated filmmaking is characterized by a tradition of experimentation. Painting, performance, and formal experiments, often originating in the visual arts, shape many films. Instead of large studios, independent short films dominate, which are often immediately recognizable as the personal artistic signature of individual filmmakers. Many artists work across different media: they move between Film, performance, music, and other forms of expression, changing roles and formats and thus continuously expanding the possibilities of animated film. Public funding is minimal by international standards, which has a strong impact on creative work: independence and a willingness to experiment become virtually a necessity. All of the films shown convey precisely this, drawing on a wide variety of artistic techniques as well as narrative and aesthetic strategies!

Are there any personal festival moments that Tricky Women particularly Tricky Women of Tricky Women for you?

The special moments are precisely those in which networking and exchange become visible—when, for example, animation artists from different regions or generations meet in person (for the first time), engage with each other, put their works in dialogue with each other and develop them further, or simply express mutual enthusiasm for each other. Other moments are those in which feminist discourses are reflected upon and further developed together with the audience, opening up generous opportunities to learn from one another.

In addition to our joint online program, what highlights await us in this anniversary edition?

A special feature this year are three curated anniversary programs presenting a selection of animated works from the last 25 years of the festival. The works are not viewed through a nostalgic lens, but rather from a contemporary perspective, asking how the viewing of the films may have changed and what questions and debates they may raise today that are new or still relevant. The programs not only bring together works from different decades, but also their creators: for the anniversary edition, Tricky Women Tricky Realities is hosting filmmakers from different generations—from pioneers of sand animation to students presenting their first works. Tricky Women Tricky Realities 2026 wants to celebrate its birthday loudly, together with long-time companions and new friends!

And finally, what is your personal pro tip for the festival?

Every year, the International Forum at the Filmmuseum offers a special opportunity for filmmakers and audiences alike to engage with the art of animation. The International Forum sees Film an opportunity for encounters, networking, and joint exchange on artistic strategies, as well as animation art as an opportunity to spread feminist debates. Looking back on a quarter of a century in which Tricky Women has not only encountered Tricky Women but also helped shape it through active exchange, the International Forum 2026 asks about strategies and gestures of feminist historicization: Who makes history, whose stories are historicized? As part of the International Forum, IN CONVERSATION: CAROLINE LEAF will be an extraordinary highlight of the festival: the audience will have the opportunity to engage in dialogue with animation artist Caroline Leaf. – a pioneer and master of sand animation, glass painting, and scratch-on-70 mm.

Thank you very much for talking to us. We look forward to the festival!

Personal recommendations from the festival directors at KINO VOD CLUB:

The films we showcase aim to break with familiar narrative structures and viewing habits, imagining new worlds or disrupting the one we live in. The films in this selection do all of this—by challenging us narratively and aesthetically, maintaining a sense of humor, going overboard, and/or being particularly sensitive.

Waltraud Grausgruber, Lara Bellon & Lisa Heuschober