Sabrina Stoll’s Snowflakes is an animated 6-minute drama about finding a spark of magic in bleak circumstances. Charly, its tiny protagonist, discovers that there is joy to be found even within the confines of four walls when a little girl walks into her room at the children’s hospital. Written by Tiziana Giammarino & Sabrina Stoll,… Continue reading Snowflakes: Living and Resilience in Little Ones
Tag: Animated Film Review
Kintsugi: Change on Incomprehensible Scales Requires Coping in Small Degrees
Cleto Acosta-McKillop’s 8-minute Kintsugi uses the philosophy behind the Japanese practice to craft a film about shifting times. A larger economic change is seen through the eyes of a traditional Japanese good luck cat. What is to become of the old, simple cat at the simple ramen restaurant when a shiny new restaurant with a… Continue reading Kintsugi: Change on Incomprehensible Scales Requires Coping in Small Degrees
LUCHA and the EKEKO: Daughters and The Journeys To Their Mothers
LUCHA and the EKEKO, written and directed by Roger Edwards Jr., is an 8-minute animated film that closely watches as a mother and daughter find new meaning in their relationship through an old memory. The orphaned child gains fresh perspective on her adoptive mother just as the latter shares the story of a shift in… Continue reading LUCHA and the EKEKO: Daughters and The Journeys To Their Mothers
Lifeblood: A River, And The God And Land It Sustains
Nicholas Tory’s animated short Lifeblood pays tribute to Bourke shire, a New South Wales town with centuries of Aboriginal history. Set against the backdrop of the Darling River, the landscape contains stories upon stories, layered and overlapping, an intricate ecosystem that is governed by each element of the land. The 19-minute film—written in collaboration between… Continue reading Lifeblood: A River, And The God And Land It Sustains
The Trail Beyond Highland Road: Feel-Good Conservationism And Hope
Eli Copperman’s 5-minute dramedy, The Trail Beyond Highland Road takes pains to keep its tale simple. Drawn in a child’s hand, the animated short looks through the eyes of a little girl and her father at the plight of wildlife without food and habitat. The whole of the ecosystem in a razed down forest next… Continue reading The Trail Beyond Highland Road: Feel-Good Conservationism And Hope
Speed Dating: A Charming Rom-Com On The Pains Of Dating
For those single for a long time, it can engender an obsessive fear of never finding love and a concurrent obsessive search for love. For the protagonist of Meghan Artes’ stop motion animation Speed Dating, Ava, this has resulted in giving a chance to a more efficient method: speed dating. The film opens with a… Continue reading Speed Dating: A Charming Rom-Com On The Pains Of Dating
Je Sors Acheter Des Cigarettes: A Family Through The Eyes Of A Boy
Osman Cerfon’s animated Je Sors Acheter Des Cigarettes (I’m Going Out For Cigarettes) is beguilingly simple. A 12 year-old boy passing his days with cola and games, his mother and sister around him, but never intrusive and never too close. Jonathan (Thėo Van de Voorde) knows them, and perhaps they know each other in the… Continue reading Je Sors Acheter Des Cigarettes: A Family Through The Eyes Of A Boy
Hedgehog’s Home: The Charms Of A Simple (But Layered) Story And Lovely Animation
Hedgehog’s Home, Eva Cvijanović’s adaptation of Branko Ćopić’s short story, is a delightful ten minutes of needle-felt stop motion animation about the joys of one’s own home, as depicted through a hedgehog and the love he has for his humble home inside an old tree. It is a classic children’s tale, and the storytelling remains… Continue reading Hedgehog’s Home: The Charms Of A Simple (But Layered) Story And Lovely Animation
All Of Our Shadows: The Humanising Beauty Of Boys Reaching Out
All Of Our Shadows does something rare and moving: it allows a boy to be frightened and it allows him to find his own community. The animated film, all of eight minutes, makes no pretensions of bravado. It is natural to be afraid in a dangerous, unstable world, and the film’s 13-year old protagonist is never… Continue reading All Of Our Shadows: The Humanising Beauty Of Boys Reaching Out
Cycle: Warmth As A Remedy To Despair
Part III of the Kōan series, Cycle, is the most wholesome of the three. Its 2-minute runtime somehow appropriately reflects the idea it presents: the transient nature of life. You are here one second, and the next you are not. But Cycle, written by director Pak H. Chau and Rohan Ponniah, goes deeper than that, even with a narrative as short and simple as… Continue reading Cycle: Warmth As A Remedy To Despair