Conference
Designing Spaces
LÄND-made
ON SITE
Raum Reutlingen
Thursday, May 07, 11:15
From Student Oscars to Annie Awards: Our Journey with A Sparrow’s Song (and what we learned)
Video on demand
In this panel, we want to share our journey, experience, and learnings after wrapping up the three-year-long production of our graduation film A Sparrow‘s Song. What did we learn from roughly a year of being in the festival circuit, and what are our takeaways from our very first award season: from the Student Academy Awards to the Annie Awards.
Based on our personal experiences, we want to answer questions we had ourselves before going into the process: what happens after the film is finished? How does short film distribution work? How to talk with the media for interviews? How to approach networking? How does Oscar campaigning work? And after all: what comes next?
About the Film:
A Sparrow‘s Song is a nine-minute long CG animated short film following an elderly widow who, in the midst of World War II, struggles to overcome her grief and rediscover joy in her life until she finds a dying sparrow she hopes to save.
The film was produced over the course of three years at the Animationinstitut of Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg and had over 50 artists involved. The film has been screened at festivals worldwide and has won multiple awards, including Gold at the Student Academy Awards 2025 and an Annie Award for Best Student Film in 2026.
Tobias Eckerlin, Writer & Director
Tobias Eckerlin is a writer, director and CGI artist. He earned his Master of Arts in Communication Design from Mannheim University of Applied Sciences in 2018, where his creative focus evolved from photography to live action, and ultimately to CGI and animation. In 2025, he graduated from the renowned Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg with a diploma in Directing Animation. He wrote and directed the multi-award-winning animated short A Sparrow’s Song as his graduation project.
Lilli-Luisa Heckmann, Animator
Lilli-Luisa Heckmann is an animator based in Germany. Most recently, she worked at SERU Animation in Ludwigsburg. She developed her passion for animation while studying at Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg, where she graduated in 2024 with a diploma in Character Animation. On her multi-award-winning graduation short film A Sparrow’s Song, she was a lead animator, leading a team of over 20 animators.
Before that, she studied Communication Design at Mannheim University of Applied Sciences and gained early experience creating animations for German broadcasters. She also attended the Lucerne Master Academy of Animation, learning from mentors from renowned studios including DreamWorks, Pixar, and Weta FX