Award: Best Animated Film – 5th edition of the Kobani International Film Festival 2024 (Taha Karimi Edition)

Film Synopsis:

Through the limitless imagination of a child, In Half unfolds as a surreal cinematic journey between fear, memory, and self-discovery. The film follows a man trapped within his own anxieties, forced to travel through a strange and magical universe where reality constantly shifts between dreamlike spaces, fragmented memories, and symbolic encounters.

As the journey progresses, the protagonist confronts unresolved fears, inner conflicts, and echoes from his past while searching for meaning, reconciliation, and a clearer understanding of his own identity.

Built through expressive animation, stylized visual worlds, and emotionally charged imagery, the film transforms fantasy into a psychological and emotional landscape. Its cinematic language blends surrealism, symbolic storytelling, and visual experimentation, creating an animated experience that moves beyond traditional narrative structure toward introspection and emotional immersion.

About the Director:

Jorge Morais Valle is an independent Spanish filmmaker and visual artist from Vigo, Spain. His artistic background emerged from an early connection to drawing, sculpture, and visual arts, which later shaped his cinematic and animation style.

In 2010, he released his first animated short film, The Painter of Skies, which received broad international recognition and established him as a distinctive visual storyteller within independent animation cinema.

Since then, Morais Valle has collaborated with studios and production companies across Portugal, England, Italy, and Germany, expanding his experience in production design, visual storytelling, and cinematic animation.

His work is recognized for its expressive visual identity, emotional symbolism, and ability to merge fantasy with psychological depth. Through handcrafted visual worlds and experimental cinematic structures, he creates animated films that explore memory, fear, identity, and human fragility.

In In Half, Morais Valle presents an immersive visual experience where animation becomes a cinematic language for emotional exploration and inner transformation, earning the film the Best Animated Film Award at the Kobani International Film Festival 2024.