Mitja Manček, born in Postojna (ex-yu) in 1987, started designing, animating and directing my first animated film at the age of 10. I engraved directly on a film stock the design, animation and direction of animated film The Death in 2007, which got the award for the best animated film at international student film festival Filofest and it got the diploma ASIFA Serbia on European festival of animated film Balkanima the following year. I was accepted to Film School Zlín in Czech Republic in 2007 and finished it two years later by receiving Specialist Diploma in Graphic Design In Animated Film. Since 2010 I work in Slovenia as a self-employed artist.

I created design, animation and direction of short animated film Composition by engaving image and sound directly on a film stock in 2015. The film got awarded as the best experimental film at Slovene Film Festival and it received Special Mention for Experimental Animation in Balkanima on the same year. It got awarded prize for the best sound on Paris International Animated Film Festival and honorary mention of Andreas Hykade on festival Etiuda&Anima the following year. It was accepted to main competition programs of world’s most renowned animation film festivals such as Holland Animated Film Festival HAFF from Utrecht, World Festival of Animated Film Animafest Zagreb, both in 2016, and Melbourne International Animated Film Festival- MIAFF the following year.

Laurels is already my jubilée 20th short animated film, in which sound, editing, animation, design and direction was created by me in 2021. It got already 10 awards on 9 international festivals. I’d like to mention two of them- Hollywood Gold Awards and Cannes World Film Festival – Remember the Future. Both festivals took place in april 2022 and both awarded my film in the category of best super short film (less than 5 minutes).

The animation of Laurels is made by drawing on paper, which is the technique, which I used for my first six films of mine, before the study in Czech Republic. Besides the aforementioned engraving on film stock and drawn on paper animation I used 2D computer animation for most of my films after the study in Czech Republic, where I got experience also in puppet animation and pixilation.