A Thousand and One Night in Zagreb

Animafest’s Open Air On Sunday Screens the Oldest Animated Feature

Ahead of the eagerly awaited festival week, Animafest Zagreb 2026 invites the citizens of Zagreb to a unique outdoor film experience, on Sunday, June 7 at 9:30pm in the courtyard of the Academy of Fine Arts (Ilica 85). This year, Animafest’s beloved open-air has prepared a real treat – the oldest surviving feature-length animated film The Adventures of Prince Ahmed (1926) by the legendary German director Lotte Reiniger. Perhaps the best example of the now rare silhouette collage animation (shadow animation) is not only ‘more beautiful and older’ than Disney’s Snow White, but after three years of painstaking ‘frame-by-frame’ making and hand-colouring, it has managed to perfectly convey the magic of fairy tales from 1001 Nights. The hero of the film is a prince who is carried away by a magical flying horse to an enchanted land where he joins forces with Aladdin himself, clashes with an evil wizard and saves the princess. The Zagreb nights will thus become Baghdad nights for a moment, of course from some distant, much happier Abbasid times of that Middle Eastern centre. And to be truly be transported to the time of Harun al-Rashid even without flying carpets, live synth improvisation will be provided by Miroslav Mrva, Bogumil Kulaga, Daniel Šuljić and Andrija Santro.

The significance of The Adventures of Prince Ahmed, created within the scope of the short-lived but extremely influential Weimar cinema, is illustrated by the fact that it is the first known use of a multi-plane camera, that Walter Ruttmann and Oskar Fichinger participated in its production, that Fritz Lang and Bertolt Brecht attended its premiere, and that Disney’s Aladdin decided to pay direct homage to it. During the restoration of the film, the so-called Desmet method was used, which returned the film to its original colours, although it still captivates today primarily with its meticulous, perfectly sharp black silhouettes.