Thus ENIMATION festival enables children and youth to present their work on the internet and in the cinema. Additionally, this program allows for exchanging of ideas, knowledge, and opinions at the international level.
In the competition program, we screen the best films produced by children and young people worldwide. There are three age categories:
• MINI filmmakers, up to 10 years,
• MIDI filmmakers, from 11 to 14 years,
• MAXI filmmakers, from 15 to 19 years.
At the festival, we screen animated, feature, documentary, and experimental films. The festival also includes a competitive and non-competitive film program, various workshops, and other educational content that complements the screenings.
School groups especially are invited to the festival, as the festival allows children and young people to watch selected films produced by their peers from all over the world.
From all the films of the competitive program, the three-member international jury selects the best film from each category and the overall winner, who receives the main prize of 150 euros donated by the Sonda Foundation, to encourage and support new film achievements.
In 2021, the program of Slovenian children and youth films will be set up as a separate competition program. The winning film will be nominated for the Youth Cinema Award selection, which selects the three best films each year and screens them at various festivals worldwide.
The beginnings of the ENIMATION festival (formerly the Little Elephant Festival) date back to 2011. As a small festival, the ENIMATION made its first steps with the help of the Animateka festival, which was then hosted at the Kino Udarnik cinema in Maribor. Since 2014, he has been a member of the international Youth Cinema Network (YCN). The Municipality of Maribor has supported the festival since 2015. A significant contribution to the festival is a special workshop for translating and subtitling films for students in cooperation with the Faculty of Arts of the University of Maribor, led by Robert Petrovič and foreign language professor Melita Koletnik, Ph. D.