Animation Is Film Festival 2026 - TCL Chinese 6 Theatres, Hollywood

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Everybody tells you animation is for children right up until the year you work out that most of the films that genuinely wrecked you were drawn. This is the festival built for whoever that happened to. Its ninth edition puts Oscar contenders on the same four-day program as a twenty-six-year-old cult picture nobody's studio wanted, which is the entire argument it exists to make. On the awards side: Louis Clichy's Iron Boy, Leah Nelson's Tangles, The Violinist, and the first theatrical showing anywhere of the opening two episodes of Dana Terrace's Knights of Guinevere. But the reason to clear a Friday is further down the grid — the North American premiere of Shingo Natsume's Ghost: End of Night, and a retrospective print of Yoshiaki Kawajiri's Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust, the 2000 film that underperformed and then quietly became the thing a whole generation pointed at to end the argument about whether animation was a medium or a genre. Opening day starts with Best of Annecy at four in the afternoon, which means the festival's first act is a room full of people watching shorts that will never get a US release. October 16 to 19, at TCL 6 on Hollywood Blvd. Passes and single tickets through the festival.