The inaugural "Animation is Film" festival announced its full competition film lineup last Wednesday. Newly announced films screening in competition include SHAFT and Nobuyuki Takeuchi's Fireworks, Should We See it from the Side or the Bottom? , Studio 4°C and Guillaume "Run" Renard's Mutafukaz , and Science Saru and Masaaki Yuasa's Night is Short, Walk On Girl . The event will also hold a special screening of Masaaki Yuasa's Mind Game .

The festival previously announced that Masaaki Yuasa and Science Saru's Lu over the Wall anime film and Studio Ponoc and Hiromasa Yonebayashi's Mary and the Witch's Flower anime film will screen in competition. The screening will mark the North American premiere of Mary and the Witch's Flower.

The inaugural festival will run from October 20-22 at the TCL Chinese 6 Theater in Hollywood. The event will host 20 programs, including feature films in competition, special presentations, retrospectives, and short film programs. The festival will feature both juried and audience awards.

Animation distribution company GKIDS, the Annecy International Animation Film Festival, and entertainment trade magazine Variety announced the creation of the new film festival in June.

The three companies aim to "fill a gap in the US market by establishing a world class animation festival on par with the major events in Europe and Asia." The festival plans to "champion and support" women filmmakers, filmmakers from "a wide range of cultural, economic, and national backgrounds," and filmmakers who "use animation to pursue unique cinematic visions and who are unconstrained by conventional notions of what animation is capable of."

Fireworks, Should We See it from the Side or the Bottom? opened on August 18 in Japan, eraning 170 million yen (about US$1.56 million) on its opening day. The film debuted at #3 in the Japanese box office.

Mutafukaz previously screened at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival on June 13. The project was first announced in 2011, and the staff announced in 2015 that the film was slated for release in 2017.