Animated Short “I Died in Irpin” by Anastasiia Falileieva Named Best of the Best at Emile Awards

The animated short I Died in Irpin by Ukrainian director Anastasiia Falileieva has been named Best of the Best in the short film category at the Emile Awards.

The award was announced on November 16 via the event’s official social media channels.

Falileieva’s film took the top prize in its category, while Joko by Izabela Plucińska earned awards for Best Character Design and Best Backgrounds in a short film.

I Died in Irpin is a documentary animation that recounts the earliest days of Russia’s full-scale invasion through the director’s personal experience. The 11-minute film combines charcoal-based animation with Falileieva’s own archival footage.

“Through a personal voiceover and nonlinear imagery, the film explores how memory breaks down under extreme stress, positioning animation both as testimony and as a call for justice,” the director said, according to Suspilne Culture.

The film has already received multiple awards. In 2024, it won Best Animation at several Ukrainian festivals—including the national competition of KISFF and the international competition of Linoleum—and was also recognized internationally as Best Documentary Animation at the Cinanima Animated Film Festival in Portugal and Best Short Film at the Bucheon Animated Film Festival in South Korea.

Earlier, it was reported that Ukraine will participate in the Guatemala Biennale of Contemporary Art for the first time, showcasing a project by artist Alevtina Kakhidze that examines Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Kakhidze will exhibit I’m Still Drawing This War, a work that brings together drawings, diary entries, and a 360° film to portray her personal experience of the war. The narrative starts in 2014, with conversations between the artist and her mother in occupied Zhdanivka in the Donetsk region. It then traces the early days of the full-scale invasion, the liberation of the Kyiv region, and continues through 2025, as the war persists.

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