About the Festival
“Your Pacific Northwest hub for independent animation.”

Sea Slug Animation Festival is a film festival in Seattle celebrating the ingenuity, creativity, and weirdness of independent animation.

Sea Slug showcases all animation forms and mediums, with a special emphasis on film. Sea Slug strives to empower animators and animation fans local to British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, and NorCal to form personal and professional connections around animation, and to take pride in the talent right here in this neck of the woods.

Hannah Baek
CO-FOUNDER they/she/he

Hannah Baek is an independent film programmer and educator originally from Seattle. With special interests in Asian cinema, queer cinema, and animation, they have programmed for the Seattle Asian Art Museum, Make Believe Seattle, the Seattle Queer Film Festival, and the Harvard Film Archive. They have also worked for Sundance as a marketer, SIFF as an educator, and VIFF as a juror. They fondly remember seeing movies at Metro Cinemas, the Harvard Exit, the Guild 45th, the original Egyptian, and the former Cinerama... And they believe they will all gloriously rise again!

Favorite Animation Style:
Stop Motion

Favorite Animated Short:
Food (Jan Svankmajer, 1992)

Favorite Animated Feature:
Mind Game (Masaaki Yuasa, 2004)

Rhys Iliakis
CO-FOUNDER he/they

Rhys Iliakis is a graphic designer and artist originally from Chesapeake, Virginia, but has lived in Seattle for around a decade. He has done graphic design and branding works primarily for arts nonprofits such as Three Dollar Bill Cinema, Seattle Children’s Theater, Make Believe Seattle, Theater Puget Sound, and the Jacob Lawrence Gallery among others. Since 2021, he has been the lead in-house designer for the SIFF. Rhys passionately loves the art of animation, as it inspired him to learn how to draw and fueled his interest in film in general. Though not a professional animator himself, he has experimented with animations, giving himself carpal tunnel after trying frame-by-frame.

Favorite Animation Style:
Traditional Frame-by-Frame

Favorite Animated Short:
The Burden (Niki Lindroth von Bahr, 2017)

Favorite Animated Feature:
Spirited Away (Hayao Miyazaki, 2001)

the FURIOUS EDITION!!!!!!!

FEBRUARY 27–28, 2026 ✷ SIFF CINEMA UPTOWN

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