Manipulate Arts – Scotland’s home for animation, puppetry and visual theatre – will see the 19th edition of the Manipulate Festival return from Wednesday 4 – Tuesday 10 February 2026 .
Find out about the full programmes here or read more below. Animated Documentary, Shorts, Animated Horror Shorts, Animated Scottish Shorts, One Bum Cinema
Film Programme
Joining the previously announced double bill of It’s Such a Beautiful Day + ME, Adam Smith’s Oscar-nominated Memoir of a Snail completes the animated features programme. Telling the bittersweet tale of Grace Pudel (voiced by Sarah Snook), who learns through the telling of her autobiography that the worst cages are the ones that we create for ourselves, this darkly funny stop-motion animation charts loss, grief and mental health and finding your way out of your shell.
Competing for the Festival’s first ever Scottish Animation Award – the Manipulate Award for Scottish Animation – 10 of the best Scottish animators will showcase their work. Distance to the Moon explores the immense power of the cosmos; Making Mountains from Sammi Duong navigates the chaos of the anxious mind; Wilma Smith’s The Jubilee explores the clouded memories of dementia; Veni Vidi Non Vici from Lenor Calaça exposes the brutality of Portuguese bullfighting; Porkhampton from Louis Managh is a remembered portrait of a hometown; Roni Niu’s Room Temperature follows in inquisitive White humanoid into the technicolour unknown; Samson Orr’s Growin’ Pains escapes into a magical world as a relief from conflict; Fairground Fever by Linda Hughes visits the Links Market in Kircaldy; Creche and Burn from Frank O’Neil enters the zombie apocalypse; and Ana Songel’s Peace of Heart creates a dreamlike, family-woven island tale.
In further Shorts, the Animated Documentary Shorts programme will feature eight titles from across the globe, covering parental loss; shame; the US prison system; school uniform conventions; bullfighting practices; a day in Ukraine; a criminal swan; and the lifecycle of a goose barnacle.
Animated Horror Shorts from the UK, USA, Taiwan, Chile, Ukraine and France will terrify audiences with bad first dates and nightmare romances; a mutant praying mantis; surreal dreams of celebrity; nighttime in the suburbs; a mysterious rabbit; a living sculpture and the official music video for Eluvium’s Regenerative Being.
All of the Festival’s shorts programmes will be available for audiences to watch online, from the comfort of their own homes, for 48 hours over the final weekend of the festival.
Finally, the much-loved One Bum Cinema Club will showcase a range of all-ages Scottish and international short animations with a feathered and furry friends theme, in a personal cinema for one. One Bum Cinema Club will be situated at the Filmhouse for the duration of the Festival, as well as visiting community libraries around Edinburgh from January – March.
Tickets for the 2026 festival are on sale now. Find about the full programme here.
