The Quirino Awards are cementing their dynamic role in the Ibero-American animation industry after the celebration of their sixth edition, which ended on May 13 in San Cristóbal de La Laguna, Tenerife. In addition to the traditional awards ceremony in which the region’s best works were recognized in nine categories, the Quirino Awards hosted a new edition of the Co-Production and Business Forum, which this year grew by 70% year-on-year in the number of one-to-one meetings. Among other activities, the event hosted the launch of Ibermedia Next, the Ibermedia Program’s new line of grants for digital animation projects, and the meeting of public television stations from Ibero-America and Europe. With the main sponsorship of the Cabildo de Tenerife, the Quirino Awards thus ratify their relevance in the construction of a common space for animation in the Ibero-American region, made up of the countries of Latin America, Spain, and Portugal.
Winners of the Quirino Awards 2023.
In the Isla Cartoon
The history of the Quirino Awards is linked to the island of Tenerife, home of the awards since their first edition in 2018. Through the Tenerife Film Commission and the Isla Cartoon brand, Tenerife promotes itself as an ideal place for the production of animated series and feature films, as well as for the development of video games, VFX and post-production services.
Currently, seven animation studios and more than 400 people work from Tenerife developing in-house content and offering a wide range of services—from 2D and 3D animation to motion capture, pipeline development and VFX—for the whole world. Tomavision, Mondo TV Studios, B Water Studios, Atlantis Animation and 3 Doubles Producciones are some of the Tenerife-based companies that participated in the latest edition of the Quirino Co-Production and Business Forum. In addition to having a consolidated industry, the island also offers tax incentives with a 50-45% deduction for foreign productions.
A Growing Forum
A total of 148 companies from 26 countries participated in the sixth edition of the Co-Production and Business Forum, the industry area of the Quirino Awards created to promote the co-production, development and circulation of Ibero-American animation works and projects. Over the course of two days, the Forum organizers coordinated 1,247 B2B meetings —70% more than last year—between production companies, distributors, sales agencies, TV channels and streaming platforms.
The companies attending the event included Adult Swim, Autour de Minuit, BBC Children’s, Canal Capital – Eureka, Canal IPE, Cartuna, Cinema Management Group, Dandelooo, DeAPlaneta Entertainment, DR, El Reino Infantil, Enanimation, EONE, Foliascope, GKIDS, Glitch, HITN, Indie Sales, KIKA, MAD Entertainment, Mediatoon Distribution, MIAM! Distribution, Monster Entertainment, NTV, Pakapaka, PGS Entertainment, RAI KIDS, RTP, RTVE, Sacrebleau, Señal Colombia, Studio 100 Media, TAT Productions, Vivement Lundi!, Warner Bros Discovery, Warner Bros. Animation, and YLE.
Within the framework of the Forum, the Ibermedia Program launched a new line of grants for digital animation projects, Ibermedia Next, which will offer financial support of up to 150,000 euros for projects that use new technological tools for animation and/or open source tools in their development. In addition, the selected projects will receive a support program worth up to 95,000 euros, including professional consulting and promotional campaigns. The grants may be requested by independent production companies from Spain, Italy or Portugal that are co-owners of projects developed with Latin American production companies or that have two Latin American creators in leading positions. Projects may also be submitted together with Latin American companies or individuals owning IPs and, to a limited extent, may be co-produced exclusively between companies from these three countries, as indicated in the program’s terms and conditions. Ibermedia Next has been developed with the cooperation of the Quirino Awards and La Liga de la Animación Iberoamericana.
Over the years, the Quirino Forum has strengthened its role as a think-tank for Ibero-American animation by organizing various activities to reflect on the challenges faced by the sector. In 2022, the Forum hosted the Conference of Ibero-American Audiovisual and Cinematographic Authorities (CAACI) and the Ibermedia Intergovernmental Council.
Participants in the meeting of public television stations from Europe and Ibero-America.
This year’s meeting between public television stations from Ibero-America and Europe strengthens the coordinating role of the Awards. Co-organized with RTVE-Radiotelevisión Española and the European Broadcasting Union, the roundtables brought together some twenty channels to reflect on the role of animated content in their programming offer, as well as to consider possible ways of cooperation between the two regions. Over the course of two days, participants analyzed programming strategies, as well as their channels’ policies for the purchase, production, and co-production of animated content, and discussed the challenges they face as public media.
Focusing on Europe, the first roundtable was attended by representatives from BBC Children’s (UK), DR (Denmark), KiKA (Germany), Latvian Television (Latvia), LRT (Lithuania), Radio Television of Kosovo (Kosovo), RTP (Portugal), RTVE (Spain), TRM – Teleradio Moldova (Moldova), YLE (Finland) and EBU.
The second roundtable featured the public television stations of Latin America, Spain, and Portugal, which met again during the Quirino Awards after last year’s meeting. Representatives from RTVC (Colombia), CANAL IPE – IRTP (Peru), RTVE (Spain), RTP (Portugal), Pakapaka (Argentina), NTV (Chile), TV3 (Spain) and Canal Capital / Eureka (Colombia) explained the challenges they face when producing, buying, and co-producing animated content, and discussed some of the co-productions that are being carried out with the participation of different channels in the region.
To close these activities, a meeting was held between Ibero-American and European public broadcasters with the aim of promoting the circulation of animated content between the two regions. Among other topics, it was proposed to share information on the calls for projects promoted by public broadcasters on both sides of the Atlantic, and case studies of co-productions involving two or more countries in the region were presented, such as “La orquestita”, “Petit”, “Polinópolis” and “Yo te adopto”.
Another activity included in the program was the roundtable “Women in Ibero-American Animation”, with the participation of the finalists from the Animation! Ventana Sur and MIANIMA mentorships.
Portuguese Animation Dominates Winners List
Portuguese animation was the star of the sixth edition of the Quirino Awards, obtaining four of the nine awards. The feature film “Nayola” and the short films “Garbage man”, “Ice Merchants” and “Garrano” were the Portuguese works recognized in an edition that also paid tribute to the centenary of Portuguese animation. Other works from Spain and Argentina also received awards.
“Nayola”, by Portuguese director José Miguel Ribeiro, was chosen Best Feature Film. This Praça Filmes production tells the story of three generations of Angolan women marked by the long civil war suffered by the country at the end of the last century.
The portuguese film director José Miguel Ribeiro and Laura Castro, Tourism’s director of Tourism of Cabildo de Tenerife.
The award for Best Series went to the Spanish “Jasmine & Jambo” by Silvia Cortés. Produced by the Catalonian Teidees Audiovisuals in co-production with TV3, the first season of this series has been broadcast in more than 15 countries.
Recognized as Best Short Film, “Garbage man” by Laura Gonçalves is a Bando à Parte production that reflects the poetry, nostalgia and authorial imprint that characterizes Portuguese animation in recent decades.
In the category Best Animation School Short Film, the award went to “Chimborazo”, directed by Ecuadorian Keila Cepeda, and produced by the UPV Universitat Politècnica de València. As for Best Commissioned Work, the trophy went to Argentina’s “Este perro está raro” by Facundo Quiroga, Juan Nadalino and Sebastián García, while “Endling – Extinction Is Forever”, developed by Spain’s Herobeat Studios, won the award for Best Video Game Animation.
Portuguese animation also stood out in the technical categories, winning two of the three awards: “Ice Merchants” by João Gonzalez won the award for Best Visual Development, while “Garrano” by David Doutel and Vasco Sá won the trophy for Best Sound Design and Original Music.
The list of winners was completed with the Argentine stop motion short film “Passenger” by Juan Pablo Zaramella, winner of the award for Best Animation Design.
The winners were chosen by an international jury made up of Andrea Fernández, Julio Bonet, Risa Cohen, Robert Jaszczurowski and Simón Wilches-Castro.
This edition’s finalist works were selected from 228 entries from 18 countries. Some 1,482 animation works have been submitted to the Quirino Awards since its creation in 2018.
The gala also paid tribute to Claudio Biern Boyd, producer and creator of animated series such as “David, el Gnomo”, “D’Artacán y los tres Mosqueperros”, and “La vuelta al mundo de Willy Fog”. Biern Boyd was born in Palma de Mallorca in 1940 and passed away last October 17. He was the founder of BRB Internacional and Apolo Films, the production companies behind some of the series and films that marked Spanish animation at the end of the last century.
About the Quirino Awards
The Awards were named in honor of the creator of the first animated feature film in history (“El Apóstol,” 1917) an Argentine production in which 58,000 drawings made by hand and shot in 35 mm were used.
The Awards have the main sponsorship of the Cabildo de Tenerife through Turismo de Tenerife and the Tenerife Film Commission; the sponsorship of the City Council of San Cristóbal de La Laguna, ICEX Spain Export and Investment, Government of the Canary Islands, Canary Islands Institute for Cultural Development, European Fund for Regional Development (FEDER), Promotur Turismo Canarias, Canary Islands Film, ICAA and PROEXCA and DeAPlaneta Entertainment; the collaboration of CAACI, the Ibermedia Program, Acción Cultural Española through the Program for Internationalization of Spanish Culture (PICE), OEI, RTVE, WELAW, La Liga de la Animación Iberoamericana (The Ibero-American Animation League), Retina Latina, Filmin, Multicines Tenerife, ULL and Culturamanía; and the support of DIBOOS, SAVE, Pixelatl, Animation! Ventana Sur, Weird Market, La Mesta, Pantalla, Canary Islands Audiovisual Cluster, and Annecy Festival; as well as that from the associations APA – Association of Animation Production Companies of Córdoba Argentina; Animar Cluster – Argentine Cluster of Animation & VFX; ABCA – Brazilian Association of Animation Cinema; Animachi Chile; Bolivian Animators Network; GEMA Colombia – Animation Business Group; Animation Costa Rica; Ecuadorian Animators Guild; ACDMX – Association of Digital Creatives of Mexico; Paraguay Animation; Peru Animation; and Casa da Animação de Portugal.
