OTTAWA — The controversial film Persepolis, based on the acclaimed graphic novel by Marjane Satrapi about her life growing up in Iran around the time of the revolution, will open the Ottawa International Animation Festival on Sept. 19, organizers announced Wednesday.

The film won the Jury Prize at Cannes, but was later withdrawn from several festivals amid protests from the Iranian government.

‘The aim of the festival is to show that animation is more than cartoons for kids. It’s also a stimulating and provocative art form,’ said OIAF artistic director Chris Robinson as he unveiled the 97 films in competition and 31 out of competition.

The majority in competition are shorts, playing alongside three features: Persepolis by Vincent Paronnaud and Satrapi; the South Korean AAchi and Ssipak, an over-the-top tale about excretion by Bum-Jin Joe; and Free Jimmy, the darkly humorous story of a drug-addicted elephant, by Christopher Nielsen.

Walt Disney Animation’s six-minute short How to Hook Up Your Home Theater — directed by Kevin Deters and Stevie Wermers-Skelton, and featuring Goofy — makes its world premiere in Ottawa. Walt Disney’s Marlon West will explain how filmmakers used a paperless system to recreate the look of the 1940s Goofy classics to create the short during a technology panel entitled Keeping It Old School: Looking Like the 40s in a Digital Age.

Hollywood studio UPA, which produced shorts including When Magoo Flew and Gerald McBoing! Boing! on Planet Moo and won three Academy Awards in the 1950s, will be featured in a special retrospective curated by Tee Bosustow, son of UPA founder Stephen Bosustow.

Oscar-winning animator Dusan Vukotic, who, like UPA, broke from the Disney style, New York Magazine illustrator Saul Steinberg and Toronto-based Head Gear Animation will be featured in retrospectives. The works of Canadian animator Janet Perlman, including her new film The Nose, and British animator Joanna Quinn, and her popular Charmin bear commercials, will also be spotlighted.

The fete also features panels, workshops and the sold-out Television Animation Conference, which is expecting 300 directors, producers, distributors, developers and buyers. The two-day business conference is aimed at stimulating business deals for animators.

Along with Keeping It Old School, the technology panels include The Evolution of Animation Software, with Kim Davidson of Side Effects Software, Erik Goulet of Softimage and Steve Bowie of MyToons.com; and Visual Effects and the Role of the Animator, which will include Rainmaker Animation’s Larry DeFlorio and Intelligent Creatures’ Lon Molnar.

The second-largest animation festival in the world, the OIAF runs Sept. 19-23. About 2,000 out-of-town visitors and a total audience of more than 20,000 are expected.