We are proud to announce the 9th edition of the festival: NEW CHITOSE 2022 – from November 3rd to 6th, 2022. The submission for all the competitions starts on April 18th.
The 9th New Chitose Airport International Animation Film Festival will be held at New Chitose Airport, which is making great strides as a gateway connecting Hokkaido and the rest of the world, as well as an entertainment airport. It will be held from November 3rd to 6th, 2022.
Launched in 2014, the festival has been providing an exciting experience that is only possible as a one-and-only “airport festival.” In 2019, the year before COVID-19, it gathered about 43,000 attendees from all over the world, which was the highest number in the history of the festival. In the 2020-2021 Pandemic, the festival took place in a hybrid format consisting of both in-theatre and online, with more than 20,000 online viewers in 2021.

The coming 9th edition will continue to present various programs delivering the look of animation “today” from various perspectives such as special screenings and guest speakers of films the festival picked to feature, in addition to the Competition section which is the main event of the festival receiving more than 2,000 entries from around the world each year. The submission for all the competitions starts on April 18th.

We are excited to introduce Team NEW CHITOSE; the new Festival Programmers and Selection Committee.
Starting this year, the festival will have a new structure for the special program planning and competition selections; Team NEW CHITOSE. The new festival programming team includes Hirotoshi Iwasaki, a graduate of Tokyo University of the Arts and an internationally renowned video artist with his unique rotoscope theory, Daisuke Tanaka, an animation researcher, and Manabu Kato from MONSTAR design Inc which is Sapporo-based event production company. The new competition selection committee welcomes two new members: Sarina Nihei, an internationally acclaimed animation filmmaker, and Asuka Yotsumoto, an animation producer from ROBOT COMMUNICATIONS INC.

Artistic Director Nobuaki Doi will step down as of the 2021 Festival. We will continue to evolve and grow toward the 10th edition of New Chitose Airport International Animation Film Festival. Don’t miss it!!   Message from Tomoko Ono, Chief Director of the Festival
The New Chitose Airport International Animation Festival will be organized and operated under a new structure “Team NEW CHITOSE” from 2022. I am very delighted and excited to collaborate with internationally active experts and artists with a wide range of animation expertise, and I look forward to working with such esteemed members. We are confident that we have delivered bold selections to date and determined to move the global film festival forward into its milestone 10th year and into the future. Thank you for your continued support!

Message from Nobuaki Doi, former Artistic Director of the Festival
As involved in the unprecedented “Airport Animation Film Festival” since its launch in 2014, I had always been thinking about giving shape to a new type of animation film festival that cannot be found anywhere else. Over the past eight years, I had been able to realize the festival that captures the “now” of animation, thanks to the enthusiastic support of audiences and filmmakers from around the world who have come to the festival because they believe in the vision of the festival. Last year, with the realization of “NEW CHITOSE PITCH”, which created the “future” for filmmakers, I felt that my role in this festival was over, and I decided to leave. Now, as animation is developing in various directions, it is impossible to capture the present and create a future that is meaningful from a single perspective. With the new programming team now in place, I expect that the festival’s unique identity will become even edgier. Last but not least, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to everyone from New Chitose Airport and the festival team who hooked me up, even though I had no background at the time of the establishment of the festival. I have grown a lot. Thank you very much!