International animated film festival Banjaluka 2019

Banjaluka International Animated Film Festival represents historical continuity of film animation in Banja Luka city, which has its roots in the May Animated Film Festival in 1971. After very short period of time, Festival ceased to exist. In 2005 interest for short animated film in Banja Luka was renewed by a group of young filmmakers of the ,, Association for Visual Arts''-FENIX ART hosting a big retrospective of the Zagreb School of Animated Film-2005, Animated Film Revue - 2006 and Days of Animated Film - 2007. In 2008 Festival had its first edition with presence of some of the world's greatest masters of animation - Jerzy Kucia, Piotr Dumala, Borivoj Dovniković - Bordo, Bill Plympton, Uzi and Lote Gefemblad.

Festival consists from International competition programs for adults and children and accompanying programs(masterclasses, exhibitions, workshops, program presentations from other festivals, authors retrospective).
During the 11 years of the Festival, more than 2,000 animated films were screened, the most important national cinematographies of animated films were represented (Poland, Russia, Canada, Great Britain, France), and the program featured representatives of the most important regional and worldwide animated film festivals: The Stuttgart International Festival of Animated Film (ITFS) Animanima (Serbia), Balkanima (Serbia), Animateka (Slovenia), Animafest (Croatia), Clermont-Ferrand (France), Annecy (France), Anim'est (Romania) ... etc. Also, guests of the Festival were numerous world-class animators: Alexandr Petrov (Russia) , Cordel Barker (Canada), Phill Muloy (UK), Nedeljko Dragic (Croatia), Priit Pärn (Estonia), Georges Schwizgebel (Switzerland),Mikhail Aldashin (Russia) and others.

Since 2010, the Festival has been held in other cities of Bosnia and Herzegovina:
Sarajevo, Trebinje, Tuzla, Bijeljina, Gradiška and Mrkonjić Grad.