Competition Programs | AI COMPETITION
UNIT.Core | B.8

30.09 | 12:30

12+

This year, LINOLEUM is launching its first AI Animation Competition in partnership with HOLYWATER TECH. Out of 33 submissions, 7 works were selected for the competition programme, showcasing a wide range of approaches to using artificial intelligence in animation. The films explore accessibility, motherhood and postpartum depression, the experience of people with ADHD, empathy and humanity, while also embracing absurdity, post-apocalyptic scenarios, and experimental music animation. For us, the competition is not only about new technologies, but above all about the stories and visual languages artists create with them.

Running time 20 min.

  • BARRIER-FREE
    Iryna Rusnak, Anastasiia Kozachuk

    Ukraine | 01:50 | 2026

    A paper-crafted story of a boy in a wheelchair reminds us that barriers do not lie within a person, but in the environment, which can either create or remove them. Accessibility means being able to move freely, take action, communicate, dream, and achieve your goals, regardless of physical abilities.

  • To My Postpartum Depression
    Iryna Sosimovych

    Ukraine | 01:55 | 2026

    A personal story created using an experimental AI animation technique takes the filmmaker back to memories of pregnancy, childbirth, and her first steps into motherhood. Looking back, she rediscovers the joy and love that seemed to have disappeared during a brief but difficult period of postpartum depression.

  • Ascent
    Volodymyr Pridorohin

    Ukraine | 03:00 | 2026

    An animated short film about the invisible efforts of people with ADHD — a condition that is often hereditary and can require extraordinary effort to cope with everyday tasks.

  • Malfunction Machine
    Oleksii Utochkin

    Ukraine | 02:47 | 2026

    A musical film unfolding in a chaotic industrial space. A multi-block figure moves through disordered machinery, trying to make sense of what is happening around it.

  • An ungrateful human
    Danyil Hrebeniuk

    Ukraine | 04:49 | 2026

    God tries to grant humanity progress, but each time people brutally kill him. Blinded by rage, he destroys humankind just as it begins to change for the better. Having lost his divinity because of this, he regains it through the mercy of the only surviving astronaut.

  • Niche Scent
    Anna Hryhoruk, Dmytro Ivashchenko

    Ukraine | 02:51 | 2026

    After a nuclear war, a supermarket salesman is reincarnated as a stink beetle. In this new reality, his chances of reproducing are zero because of a rival stag beetle. But everything changes when the hero realizes that his greatest weakness — his smell — can be turned into a superpower.

  • The Night Shift
    Yana Vynohrodska, Vasyl Khashchevoi, Yulia Kulish

    Ukraine | 03:16 | 2025

    “The Night Shift” is a short animated film — an internal autopsy dialogue of a person working on the edge of death, in constant conversation with the body, death, and the self.