Pierre-Luc Granjon was born in France in 1973. He studied at the Applied Art School of Lyon. In 1998, he began his career in animation in the studio Folimage, as a character designer and animator for the television series Hilltop Hospital. During this time, he made his first two stop-motion films, A Little Adventure (2001) and The Other Kids’ Castle (2003) followed by two cutout paper films The Child with No Mouth (2004), and The White Wolf (2006). With Antoine Lanciaux, Granjon has also directed and written four 26-minutes puppet films. He went on to make short animations in various techniques, including The Dog (2018), and The Night Boots (2024) made on an Alexeïeff-Parker pinscreen. The latter has been awarded at many festivals, including Animateka 2024 and Annecy 2025.

Elizabeth Hobbs is a traditional animator with a background in artist’s books and printmaking. Her films are made under a rostrum camera, and in the production of her animated films she has used relief print on 35mm film, butterfly prints, images created with a typewriter, paint on a bathroom tile, collage and paint and ink on paper. The films are often based on historical figures or literary adaptations and they’re sometimes funny or rude. Elizabeth likes to share her process and techniques through workshops, masterclasses and lecturing. Elizabeth is senior tutor on the Directing Animation MA at The National Film & Television School, and Associate Lecturer on the MA in Animation at London College of Communication.

Michèle Lemieux is an illustrator and animation filmmaker who has taught drawing and illustration at UQAM’s School of Design for over 30 years. Since the late 1970s, she’s worked on 15 illustrated books for young people, including Stormy Night (1997), which was adapted to the screen in 2003 at the NFB. In 2006, Lemieux was introduced to the Alexeïeff-Parker pinscreen during a workshop given by Jacques Drouin at the NFB. She was to become the artistic heir to this unique animation tool—there are only two in operation in the world today. She has made two short films using the pinscreen: Here and the Great Elsewhere (2012), which won a number of awards, and, most recently, The Painting (2024).
Lemieux has participated in group exhibitions in Europe, North America, South America and Japan, and her work has received retrospectives in France, Austria and Canada.

Juan Pablo Zaramella is a director, illustrator and animator from Argentina specialising in stop motion and mixed-media films. After his graduation from the Instituto de Arte Cinematográfico de Avellaneda (IDAC) as an Animation Director, he started directing and producing his own films. Between 1998 and 2005 he also worked as an illustrator, winning several international awards from the Society of News Design.
He has made 10 independent shorts, which were awarded around the world. In 2010, the Annecy International Animation Festival presented a special program with all his works. His film Luminaris has won 328 awards, setting the Guinness World Record for the Most Awarded Short in 2018. His last short, Passenger, was presented during the closing ceremony at Annecy 2022, winning many important recognitions like the Audience Award at ITFS Stuttgart. He is currently developing a feature film in stop motion with puppets, called I Am Nina.

Yantong Zhu is a festival director and one of the founders of Feinaki Beijing Animation Week. She graduated from Tokyo University of the Arts in 2014. As a filmmaker, her animated film My Milk Cup Cow has won numerous prizes worldwide, such as the Grand Prix of KROK and the Young Animation Award of Stuttgart. And as a children’s book author, her first picture book, Wupeng Boat and the Grandpa’s Glasses, was published in Japan by Fukuinkan Shoten in 2019. She is also the executive producer of the animated feature film To the Bright Side, which won the Grand Prize for feature film at the New York International Children’s Film Festival.