NEERAJA RAJ

“Meow or Never”

Raj is one of the “Third Culture” adults, people who have grown up outside their parents’ culture and are living outside the milieu in which they were raised. The offspring of Indian parents, she was born in Indonesia, moved to Dubai when she was 14, and went to school in Mumbai, and the U.K. She brings all these experiences into her creations, and says that they inspire her love for science fiction in her animation.

Her short “Meow or Never” is a stop-motion animated musical about a “catstronaut” in outer space pondering the meaning of life while exploring a planet with the help of an accident-prone puppy. Raj made the Bafta-shortlisted toon for her graduation film from the U.K. National Film and Television School. “I’ve always been enamored of the unknown,” Raj says. “I think we’re all so minuscule and tiny when you think of how how big the universe is. I am always curious what is out there and does any of this have any meaning. I think the film stems from that aspect of my personality.”

She started working on “Meow or Never” before the pandemic lockdown; the whole process took 14 months. “It’s not easy. Stop-motion is a very laborious, time-consuming process. You spend like the whole day and get like two seconds of work.” Raj says that while she loves “to explore different ideas,” she prefers to work in stop-motion. Her most recent is a 3-D film with a 2-D look that she is making with Nexus Studios that is coming out on the Intl. Day of the Girl Child, Oct. 11. But Raj would like to tackle feature-length films, too. “That’s the ultimate dream, I want to make a feature. I want to make many features.” — Shalini Dore

Animation is so freeing. We needed the freedom to create a brand-new Native series that celebrates our magic.” — Karissa Valencia