Haneen Koraz and Hand Crafted Animated Storytelling

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Have you heard about Haneen Koraz’s animation studio? You can see the beautiful work here: https://www.instagram.com/animator_haneen

Haneen Koraz is an award-winning animation director and mentor from Gaza. Despite the on going genocide in Palestine, she has created a space of light and creativity, working with children and young artists to create animated films to share their stories to the world.

She has been active in supporting hand crafted animation, and is at the forefront of this endeavour creating art divorced from industrialism. I really want to bring attention to this. For those of us in the animation industry, there are so many conversations about coming back to understanding the artistry behind hand crafted animation production before CG intervention. The work Haneen is doing is exactly that. She is holding onto an art form that Western animators are always lamenting the loss of. This is a genuine love of a craft that I believe has been dwindling in the spaces where animation is the most funded, yet least creative.

Her efforts not only preserve Palestinian voices but also inspire global conversations about resilience and the universal power of storytelling. The work she is doing is incredibly inspiring, and demonstrates how to realign ourselves as artists and storytellers, and not industry technicians.

I don’t want to speak too much for Hanaan, I’ll put forward a quote to share her own words. Please support her, and amplify her work:
https://www.patreon.com/c/AnimationStories/

“In the Presence of Imagination, I Forget the War

When a child chooses a story, my role as a director and trainer is to help shape it—to make it clearer, richer in detail, and closer to their soul. We don’t have boards to explain things, so we write on the walls. These walls witness the birth of small dreams growing amid the rubble.

In these moments, I find my happiness.

I forget the war.
I forget the bombings.
I forget everything that frightens and breaks me.
I forget the dark images the future paints in my mind.

In the animation workshops, I return to myself—to my passion, to my boundless imagination.

Despite everything, the children of Gaza still have the power to dream.

These children don’t just need aid—they need to be heard.
They need moments of joy, of hope, of life.
They need the chance to glimpse a better world, even if only through a sheet of paper, a pencil, and a story.”

- Haneen Koraz