Animated Shorts Get Serious
The Holocaust, mortality and abuse are somber themes captured by this year’s nominees
Letter to a Pig
In this short, helmed by first-time Oscar nominee Tal Kantor, a survivor of the Holocaust writes a thank you letter to the pig that saved his life. As the survivor recounts his experiences to a group of students, one pupil drifts off and dreams a tragic version of the story. Kantor uses a mixedmedia technique that combines traditional 2D animation and paint animation on paper blended with video segments. A similar technique was used in the filmmaker’s previous project, “In Other Words.” The film is based on Kantor’s own personal experience as a schoolgirl in which she slipped into a dream after hearing a survivor’s story. “Both the survival story and the dream left such a powerful mark that they evolved a decade later into a growing urge to create this film,” Kantor says.
Ninety-five Senses
This is the first animated short made by husband-and-wife duo Jared and Jerusha Hess (“Napoleon Dynamite,” “Nacho Libre”). Tim Blake Nelson, known for his roles in Coen brothers’ films such as “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” and “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs,” voices Coy, a man on death row who muses on the five senses he will no longer have when he dies and looks back on a difficult, troubled past. Chris Bowman and Hubbel Palmer wrote the short, animated by six teams of artists from Latin America and the U.S. through the nonprofit program MAST, with MAST co-founders Miles David Romney and Tori A. Baker serving as producers. The film won the grand jury award for animation from the Florida Film Festival, qualifying it for consideration for the Academy Awards.
Our Uniform
Yegane Moghaddam’s short depicts an Iranian girl unfolding school-day memories while smoothing the wrinkles and seams of her old school uniform. The Iranian filmmaker used an innovative technique and unexpected method: Instead of using canvas or paper, she painted directly on the cloth used for making school uniforms to tell the story. “I wanted to articulate the feeling of being a girl student in Iran and what it’s like to have an extra layer of hijab between you, the world around you and your skin,” says Moghaddam. “I used stop-motion and 2D animation. For the stop-motion, I didn’t use software. I only placed the pictures one after another. For the 2D animation, I used Procreate, which is an amazing app.”
Pachyderme
Director Stéphanie Clément enters the Oscar race for the first time with a short that follows the story of Louise, a woman recounting visiting her grandparents as a child. What should have normally been a happy holiday ends up being quite troubling. Written by Marc Rius and voiced by Michelle Bruback and Christa Théret, the 11-minute short evokes both nostalgia and sadness as it reveals how a young girl survived abuse. “By using dreamlike imagery and symbolism, I think the viewer is made more receptive” to this difficult subject matter, Clément says of the animation. “It may even touch them more deeply.”
War Is Over! Inspired by the Music of John and Yoko
Written and directed by Pixar alum Dave Mullins, the animated short is drawn from the song “Happy Xmas (War Is Over),” with Brad Booker producing and Sean Ono Lennon and Yoko Ono exec producing. It is set in an alternate WWI reality where two soldiers on opposite sides play chess with the help of a carrier pigeon. Mullins describes the short’s style as “a love letter to 2D hand-drawn animation,” which grounds the story. Originally Ono Lennon considered pairing his parents’ song with a music video, but landed on an animated short to enhance its meaning. “We had an outline after the first time we met,” Ono Lennon says. “It’s rare to connect like that.”