Jurying a film festival like GIRAF demands that you give screening after screening your full attention, try to remember everything you saw, and then compare apples and oranges. After watching what felt like hundreds of short animations in the span of one weekend, with eyeballs glued open, it’s amazing that we are still able to form coherent sentences. Yet, here we are, and we have the incredibly warm and enthusiastic community around this festival and Quickdraw to thank for making this process fun and fascinating. 

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We knew making choices would be a challenge after seeing the quality and range of films in the first screening. Each one had something special to offer to audiences, whether it was a truly innovative style, a new technique, an original way of telling a story, or some ineffable charm. The three of us all have different tastes, concerns, and things that move us based on our own experiences. But we also enjoyed the opportunity to notice what makes a film work for us, and we embraced the challenge of articulating that to each other. We loved so many of the films for different reasons and are thrilled to honour these selections as ones that stood out.

 
- Laura Harrison, Emily Pelstring & Teresa Tam