'Zagreb smells of fresh summer. I have been here many times, always in June, at the Festival. The Festival is now 30, and I am twice as old, but I love the Festival like a little boy. Every time I travel to Zagreb, I am excited as if I was meeting a loved one. Stay well, my dear, and live long!"

Eduard Nazarov, Moscow (April, 2002)

Remembering her first Zagreb Festival, British author and publicist Clare Kitson, described the first World Festival of Animated Film held in the then hall of the Officer’s Club of the Yugoslav People’s Army as small, eccentric and full of enthusiasm, adding that it was hot, stifling, but pulsating! All this was more than a precise description of the most famous Yugoslav, and later Croatian, international festival whose reputation was not damaged by the above climatic observations. Those merely alluded to the great interest and the often full projections (often overbooked) of artistic animated films.