Zaven Najjar’s ‘Allah Is Not Obliged’ wins top prize at Japan’s Niigata animation festival

French animation Allah Is Not Obliged by Zaven Najjar scooped the feature competition grand prix at the 4^th Niigata International Animation Film Festival (NIAFF).

Based on a book by Ahmadou Kourouma, the film tells the story of an orphan forced to become a child soldier during the conflicts in Liberia and Sierra Leone in the 1990s.

Najjar, who was unable to attend the festival, responded to the win with a message at the closing ceremony which read: “Kourouma’s novel deeply moved us and remains tragically relevant today as more children are used and exploited in conflicts around the world.”

NIAFF jury president Avid Liongoren praised the film as featuring “kickass music and suburb animation” and for “showing us the life of a person we never would have thought about”.

The France-Belgium-Canada-Luxembourg co-production premiered at Annecy before going on to screen at Tokyo and Red Sea. The NIAFF prize of $3,200 (¥500,000) prize will go to the film’s Japanese distributor in support of a theatrical release. Sales are handled by Mk2 Films.

The runner-up jury award was presented to Nimuendajú by director Tania Anaya. The non-fiction animated feature tells the story of the life of Curt Unckel, also known as Curt Nimuendajú, a German ethnologist who studied and lived among native Brazilians from the 1920s to 1940s. The film also premiered at last year’s Annecy.

The top prize for the festival’s inaugural Indie Box competition section for mid-length (15-40 minutes) animated films went to Autokar, a Belgium-France co-production directed by Sylwia Szkiłądź. The film centres on an eight year-old girl in the 1990s taking a bus trip from her home in Poland to Belgium. The section’s runner-up jury award went to Lee Sasha’s The Popstar Water Deer And I, a South Korean film about a young programmer in love with a pop idol water deer.

The festival’s newly established Senkrechtstarter Award, which recognises and discovers emerging talent across both competition sections, went to Winter In March, a stop-motion film from director Natalia Mirzoyan about a Russian couple attempting to flee the country after its invasion of Ukraine.

Joining Filipino director Liongoren on the jury were Japanese director Chie Hayakawa (Renoir) and Javier Fernandez, president of European Union National Institutes for Culture Japan and culture manager of Instituto Cervantes in Tokyo.

The two competition sections received a total of 274 entries – comprising 49 features and 225 mid-length films – from 59 countries. It marks a major increase from last year when the full-length competition received 69 entries from 29 countries.

NIAFF’s Hiroshi Okawa and Koji Fukiya awards, named after pioneers of Japanese animation born in Niigata, were announced prior to the festival and awarded Feb 25.

The Hiroshi Okada award went to Rock ’n Roll Mountain, the Tokyo-based animation studio founded by Kenji Iwaisawa, director of the 2025 film 100 Meters, which premiered at Annecy and won the audience award at last year’s inaugural Aichi Nagoya International Animation Film Festival.

The Koji Fukiya award went to animator Hidetsugu Ito, who worked on last year’s ChaO and The Last Blossom as animation director and animator, respectively. The veteran animator’s other credits include Steamboy, Naruto, Sword Of The Stranger, Weathering With You and Suzume.

The fourth edition of the festival, held in the port city of Niigata two hours north of Tokyo, ran from February 20-25. It featured several substantial changes to previous editions, including a shift from March to February, the addition of the Indie Box competition section, and a slimmed-down schedule with fewer venues (down from eight to four) across the city.

Many of these changes came following a shake-up in leadership last year, as the festival’s previous organisers left to found the Aichi Nagoya International Animation Film Festival, which launched last December. Last June also saw the passing of NIAFF’s founder, Kenzo Horikoshi, film producer and founder of the Eurospace arthouse cinema complex in Tokyo.

The festival’s new leadership team includes Niigata Nippo senior advisor Toshizo Oda, Kaishi Professional University faculty of anime and manga arts head of faculty Hyoe Narita, Eurospace CEO Masato Hojo, SunnyRain president and CEO Tao Nashimoto, Niigata animation president and CEO Masayuki Uchida and New Deer president and CEO Nobuaki Doi.

In addition to its competition sections, the festival featured a retrospective on the films of Osamu Tezuka, an animation workshop for aspiring animators from Japan and East Asia, and master classes from industry members such as former Kofic chairperson Park Ki-Yong and Studio 4℃ founder and producer Eiko Tanaka.

The festival attracted 34,368 visitors over its six-day run, 13% more than 2025’s 30,544. The fifth edition will take place March 19-24, 2027, returning the festival to the March timeframe.

NIAFF was sponsored by Niigata City and Niigata Prefecture in addition to firms NSG Group, Niigata Nippo, Namics, ALSOK and BSN Media Holdings, as well as a grant from Japan’s Agency for Cultural Affairs.