23rd Annual Animation Show of Shows Press Kit

• XI – Vuk Jevremovic (Croatia/Germany)
  
• Volgens de vogels (According to Birds) – Linde Faas (Netherlands)
  
• Cameras Take Five – Steven Woloshen (USA)
  
• Hillary – Anthony Hodgson (UK)
  
• The Record – Jonathan Laskar (Switzerland)
  
• John and Karen – Matthew Walker (UK)
  
• I'm Hip – John Musker (USA)
  
• Santa, The Fascist Years – Bill Plympton (USA)
  
• The Centrifuge Brain Project – Till Nowak (Germany)
  
• Hasta los huesos (Down to the Bone) – René Castillo (Mexico)
  
• Requiem for Romance – Jonathan Ng (Canada)
  
• When the Day Breaks – Wendy Tilby & Amanda Forbis (Canada)
  
• Overtime – Oury Atlan, Breakbot & Damien Ferrié (France)
  
• Father and Daughter – Michaël Dudok de Wit (Netherlands)

Funny, moving, engaging, and thought-provoking, the ANIMATION SHOW OF SHOWS not only has something for everyone, but is a remarkable and insightful microcosm of our world.

For 25 years, the ANIMATION SHOW OF SHOWS has been presenting new and innovative short films to appreciative audiences at animation studios, schools and, since 2015, theaters around the world. Over the years, 41 of the films showcased in the ANIMATION SHOW OF SHOWS went on to receive Academy Award® nominations, with 11 films winning the Oscar®. Founded and curated by producer Ron Diamond, the ANIMATION SHOW OF SHOWS is funded by major studios, companies, schools and hundreds of animation lovers around the world.

FOR HIGH RESOLUTION IMAGES AND INTERVIEWS CONTACT: RON.DIAMOND@ANIMATIONSHOWOFSHOWS.ORG

Volgens de vogels (According to Birds) (2008)

Dir: Linde Faas, Netherlands, 5:25

Dawn. The only sound is the wind in the trees. A leaf falls gently through the air and lands in a still pool. Then, as if by magic, the birds appear. This beautifully drawn, meditative film is an ode to nature and the winged creatures who fill the woods with their little rituals, strange movements and beautiful sounds. For bird lovers and non-bird lovers alike, this closely observed, evocative film is like a soothing walk in the woods.

Director’s Statement

I've always felt a deep connection to nature. As a child I could spend hours in our backyard, looking for small details that felt to me like treasures, or secrets. I kept that sense of wonder in my adult life and always felt a longing to be close to nature. Therefore I decided to move from the Netherlands to the northern part of Norway, where the wild nature is beautiful and intense and an endless inspiration for me.

To me it has always felt like there is something magical to be found in the small details of the natural world. The longer you spend time in one place and observe the world around you in silence, the more secrets begin to reveal themselves to you. Little details begin to stand out, movement comes alive. Sounds begin to fill the air from all around. And sometimes something truly magical reveals itself to you.

With Volgens de vogels, I wanted to explore that feeling of being the silent observer to a world we otherwise don't get to see. A hidden place filled with small details and little rituals. Throughout the creative process, I allowed myself to experiment with drawing and movement to let the scenes come to life. My goal was to immerse viewers in an experience guided by atmosphere and motion, where the story unfolds through movement and sound.

Awards

First prize, student competition, Holland Animation Film Festival
Artist in Residence Award, Tricky Women Festival
PISAF Special Prize, Puchon International Student Animation Festival, Korea

"Beautifully drawn and animated.”
– Jill Ragaway, Illumination Ent.

“Like nothing I’ve seen before in animation.”
– Grant Gish, Fox TV

Bio

Linde Faas was born in 1985 in Zeist, the Netherlands. She started drawing at a very young age and developed a special interest in movement and the meaning of sound. Faas studied animation at St. Joost Art Academy in Breda, graduating in 2008. Volgens de Vogels, her graduation film, screened at numerous national and international festivals, including Stuttgart and Annecy. Currently, Faas works as a freelance animator and illustrator, focusing on large fine art drawings and short experimental animations. She hopes to produce another short animated film soon.

Cameras Take Five (2003)

Dir. Steven Woloshen, Canada, 3:00

Using as a soundtrack the Dave Brubeck Quartet version of Paul Desmond’s jazz classic “Take Five,” Steve Woloshen has produced a festive explosion of graphics that reflect and punctuate the musical score. Woloshen created the work by painting the thousands of individual frames on a three-hundred-foot-long piece of negative film. The abstract shapes, undulating lines, curves, stars, waves, spots, and points continuously evolve as the music plays.

Director’s Statement

I began this film in my usual fashion, which is to say, I didn't plan any narratives, characters or sections as starting points. As I worked and listened to the track – at least twenty times – the line drawing (representing the sound of a saxophone) was leading me either to one side of the frame or the other. Two main colors began to dominate, and I was sectioning my parts into choruses, solos and refrains. Although "Take Five" is a jazz standard, I feel that it is structured more as a pop tune. As a result, a more narrative film structure started to emerge.

Awards

Best Nonnarrative Short Film, I Castelli Animati

“Moving and captivating.”
– Barry Doyle, ASIFA Magazine

“Vibrant and lighthearted.”
-Larissa Fan, Take One

“This is an experience thrown down (on film). It is the marriage of motion and music, the tender goodnight kiss of animation in its simplest form.”
– Gregory Singer, AWN

Bio

Born in Montreal, Quebec, Steven Woloshen attended Vanier College and Concordia University in Montreal. He initially made documentaries and collage films, but the freedom and accessibility of scratch animation won him over. He has since created animated and experimental films, which have been shown at screenings and festivals around the world, including the Montreal World Film Festival, Annecy International Animated Film Festival, Ottawa International Animation Festival, and I Castelli Animati in Rome. His recent works include The Dead Sea Scrolls, Objects Within, Father Knows Father Best (all 2018), Uprising and Organic (2019), The Zolle Suite (2021), Perf Dance (2022), and Orbiter (2023)

Hillary (1994)

Dir. Anthony Hodgson, UK, 9:00

“Hilary worked in an office with a rubber plant and a man whose name she’d forgotten, and she lived with her mother and her mother’s father, who was 76 and deaf and who secretly ate dogfood, although it wasn’t much of a secret.” A man tells his daughter a bedtime story as they meander through a series of strange locations, each one Illustrating a different chapter in the humorous, but ultimately tragic, life of his wife Hilary.

Director’s Statement

Hilary was my graduation film from the Royal College of Art. It took about a year to make, and most of that time was spent building the puppets and sets. Filming took about nine weeks. The college provided me with a studio, camera, lights, film stock and processing, as well as a small materials budget. I thought it might well be the last opportunity I would have to make a film of my own, so I included everything in it that I could think of. The look of the film was driven by my need to make things as simple as possible, because of the number of locations, the time restraints, and my own technical abilities.

Awards

Best Film, Fantoche International Animation Festival
Audience Award, Ottawa International Animation Festival
Jury Commendation, Montreal Animation Festival

Bio

Anthony Hodgson was born and raised in York, England. He moved to London to study Illustration at the University of Westminster, and then Animation at the Royal College of Art. He was Resident Animator at the Museum of the Moving Image, made a stop-motion short for Channel 4, and wrote scripts for children’s television and the BBC. In the 1990s, he moved to California to work at DreamWorks Animation. His recent credits include animator on Kung Fu Panda 4 (2024), and animation supervisor on Ruby Gillman: Teenage Kraken (2023), Abominable (2019), The Boss Baby (2017), and Mr. Peabody & Sherman (2014).

The Record (2022)

Dir. Jonathan Laskar, Switzerland, 8:00

The Record tells the story of an antiques dealer who has lost the memory of his childhood and his cultural identity. When a traveler gives him a magic vinyl record – telling him, "It reads your mind and plays your lost memories" – the man becomes increasingly obsessed by this uncanny artifact, listening to it again and again.

Director’s Statement

Reading Borges' novella The Book of Sand deeply moved me. Faced with a massive volume of infinite pages containing every text ever written, its owner descended into madness. Logically, it was impossible for him to ever find a page he had already read. This novella was my first source of inspiration for writing my film.

Having grown up in Marseille in a family of Jewish Algerian descent, the theme of familial exile tied to war has been present in my life since childhood. My grandfather was imprisoned in Germany during the five years of World War II, during which he was forced to hide his Jewish identity in order to survive. Later, after the Algerian War of Independence, my family faced yet another rupture: the forced abandonment of our homeland and its cultural heritage.

This film was born from a deeply personal necessity tied to my family’s history. The record in the film is more than just a vinyl recording – it is an archive in the broadest sense of the term: a record of history, journeys, and migrations. Our desire to preserve everything, our need to archive it all, becomes a desperate task. Through the parable of an antique dealer who recalls a repressed trauma through music, I wished to explore the relationship between the duty of remembrance and the quest for cultural identity.

To create the visual aspect of this story, I chose animation techniques to depict an interior universe shaped by memories and an exterior confinement, realized through a contrasting visual style. The interplay of shadow and light, as well as the graphic rhythm, directly aligns with the musical rhythms, while the melodies and harmonies in the score subtly evoke Judaism – without being overly explicit.

Awards

Jean-Luc Xiberras Award, Annecy International Animated Film Festival
Swiss Film Prize for Best Animation Film
Jury Award - Best Animation Short, Santa Fe International Film Festival

Bio

Jonathan Laskar received a Bachelor in Fine Arts from the Université Aix-Marseille II, a diploma in Architecture from the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, and a Master in Design from the Hochschule Luzern, Switzerland. From 2008 to 2011, he worked as an architect in Basel, Switzerland before turning his attention to animation. In addition to The Record, he directed the short film From Earth and Ink (2013), and has worked as an animator and compositor for works by Georges Schwizgebel and others.

John and Karen (2007)

Dir. Matthew Walker, UK, 5:00

An unlikely couple – John, a polar bear, and Karen, a penguin (!) – try to resolve their problems in this dryly humorous and surprisingly touching short.

Director’s Statement

The creative process is usually very difficult, with lots of scrapped ideas and false starts along the way (my graduation film Astronauts was very much that), but my second short film, John and Karen, was unexpectedly easy. The film started life as a last-minute submission for “Animated Daytime Shorts,” a scheme by Channel 4 in the UK to commission short films to be broadcast during daytime TV. The theme for that year was “relationships” or “love” or something like that.

I’ve always been drawn to mundane stories being told in weird or fantastical situations, and the seed of the idea was simply that I thought a penguin and a polar bear being in a relationship and living in the suburbs was funny. The film came to mind fully formed soon after that, and my written pitch was pretty much the final script in prose form and it never changed.

Awards

Best Short Short, Aspen Shortsfest
Special Prize, Hiroshima International Animation Festival
Best Animation, Melbourne International Film Festival
Best TV Animation for Adults, Ottawa International Animation Festival 2007

Bio

Matthew Walker attended Falmouth University and the University of South Wales, where he earned his BA in Animation. Since 2008, he has been a director, animator, writer, and storyboard artist at Aardman Animation in Bristol, UK. In addition to John and Karen, he directed several episodes of the hit Netflix series Shaun the Sheep: Adventures from Mossy Bottom, and is the creator and series director of Lloyd of the Flies.

The Centrifuge Brain Project (2011)

Dir. Till Nowak, Germany, 6:35

Since the 1970s, scientists have been conducting experiments with bizarre amusement rides to study their effects on the human brain. Based on his childhood fascination with the strange atmosphere of amusement parks, Till Nowak produced this fictional documentary, which combines handheld camera footage with digital animation to create a series of non-existing, physics-defying thrill rides, ostensibly intended for use in research efforts to improve human cognitive function.

Director’s Statement

The strangeness of amusement parks was something that has been in my head since I was a child. The idea for the film popped up when I saw an amusement ride from afar, and realized how much space there was between the ride and the clouds above. I often run around in the world seeing things with my “digital eye,” so it was just a simple step to get rid of physical boundaries and use all the unused space around the amusement ride for extensions.

I created The Centrifuge Brain Project in my free time, in between other projects, while my first short film Delivery was touring festivals around the world. Each of the seven carousel animations took about two weeks to complete. Including the writing, shooting, editing, sound and finalization, it might add up to a total of five months of work, spread over almost three years, during which I kept the whole project a secret.

I did all of the visual effects, editing and compositing by myself, using 3ds Max, SynthEyes, and After Effects. I shot the effects footage, while the scenes in the science lab were filmed by cinematographer Ivan Robles Mendoza. The sound design was finalized and mixed by Andreas Radzuweit.

Awards
Best Short Film, 34th Moscow International Film Festival
Best Short Short, Aspen Shortsfest
Audience Award, Hamburg International Short Film Festival

“The Centrifuge Brain Project toys with science in such a deadpan way that some commenters asked if the crazy amusement park rides were real or not. Yet, in the end, it's not a simplistic joke, but a short meditation on how we humans try to fight gravity – and nature in general – both in the lab and at amusement parks.”
–Carl Zimmer, National Geographic

Bio

Till Nowak is an artist and filmmaker born in Germany in 1980. In 1999, he founded the animation studio frameboX and gained international attention through several award-winning projects, including The Centrifuge Brain Project. His 2015 short animation Dissonance won 11 international awards, including the Grand Prix at Anima Mundi and a special award at Annecy. In addition to animation, Nowak's work includes cultural projects such as his art installation at the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, collaborations with pop stars such as Katie Perry, and serving as a concept artist for many high-profile features, including Black Panther, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, Wonka, and Megalopolis.

Hasta los huesos (Down to the Bone) (2001)

Dir. René Castillo, Mexico, 10:00

In this exquisite stop-motion work, a newly dead man finds himself in an afterlife nightclub populated by others who are no more. Unsure if he’s in purgatory or if this is his permanent resting spot, he tries to make the best of it and, ultimately, he must accept his fate.

Director’s Statement

The name of the song in Hasta los huesos is “La llorona” and it is a popular Mexican song that originated in the region of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, in Oaxaca. There is no single version of the song, and its date of creation is unknown. I invited Eugenia León, a very famous singer in Mexico, to record an original version for my film. She accepted, and the musical arrangements were made by Marco Morel, an excellent musician that Eugenia chose.

And, yes, the same song was used in Coco.

Awards

FIPRESCI Prize, Annecy International Animated Film Festival
First Prize, Havana Film Festival
Jury Award, Palm Springs International ShortFest

"Marvelous animation... a colorful cacophony of clattering characters."
–Film Threat

"Eye-popping."
–Variety

Bio

From the ashes of a tragic accident in the 1990s emerged one of Mexico's pioneers in stop-motion animation. After brain surgery and awakening from a seven-day coma, at age 18 René Castillo made a life-changing decision: to leave his Business Administration studies to pursue his true passion.

Three years after the accident, an introductory course in clay animation ignited his path. He redirected his studies toward Communication Sciences, while teaching himself the art of stop motion, a technique he would master until becoming a national reference. His short films Sin sostén and Hasta los huesos – which explore the theme of death through his personal experience – garnered over 50 international awards, including a Palm d'Or nomination at Cannes.

Today, he is an animation director who masters and blends traditional and digital techniques: stop motion, claymation, 2D and 3D animation. His expertise ranges from advertising projects to film productions, notably his work as Senior Animator on Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio, winner of the 2023 Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.

As an educator, he shares his passion by teaching animation courses, proving that sometimes life's unexpected turns lead us exactly where we need to be.

I'm Hip (2023)

Dir. John Musker, USA, 4:00

A self-absorbed cat, in a jazzy song and dance, proudly and comically proclaims his "hipness" to the world. The world is not impressed.

Director’s Statement

Although I have a great deal of experience with studio-based, feature-length animation, I had long hoped to make a short animated film of my own. When I retired from Disney in 2018, I thought the time had come at last to pursue that dream. I wanted to make something that was me, undiluted, even if that meant my short might have quirky, oddball moments. I also wanted to celebrate hand-drawn animation.

I had several ideas for short films, all of them built around pieces of music. Some of my favorite moments in the films that Ron Clements and I directed at Disney were the songs, and I’ve loved the song “I’m Hip” for a long time. I had an early choice whether to animate on paper, which was the only way I ever had, or to embrace one of the available software options. After a few early tests, I was sold on drawing it with a stylus, using TVPaint, a French animation software program. However, this project would still be unfinished if not for the indefatigable work of my partner on this, Talin Tanielian. She knew TVPaint very well, and even more so, After Effects, which she used to composite everything. And she kept everything organized despite my best efforts to sow chaos.

Awards

Best Animated Film, Vienna Independent Film Awards
Best Animated Film, Prague Independent Film Awards
DHL Diversity Prize, BIAF Short Film Competition, Seoul

Bio

John Musker (born November 8, 1953) is an American animator, film director, screenwriter, and film producer, who often collaborates with fellow director Ron Clements. Born in Chicago in 1953, Musker attended Loyola Academy and the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences at Northwestern University. He obtained his Master of Fine Arts at the California Institute of the Arts, where he served a two-year apprenticeship with famed Disney animator Frank Thomas. Musker is best known for writing and directing the Disney films The Great Mouse Detective (1986), The Little Mermaid (1989), Aladdin (1992), Hercules (1997), Treasure Planet (2002), The Princess and the Frog (2009), and Moana (2016). I’m Hip screened in competition at numerous film festivals around the world, including Annecy and the Boston International Film Festival, and was shortlisted for an Academy Award in 2023.

Santa, The Fascist Years (2008)

Dir. Bill Plympton, USA, 3:00

While we all think of Santa as "Jolly old St. Nick,” it turns out that this beloved icon has a dark past that has only recently come to light. This short film uncovers and explores Santa's flirtation with politics and greed.

Bio

Among the best-known independent animators, Bill Plympton was born in Portland, Oregon, whose rainy climate he credits for nurturing his drawing skills and imagination. Plympton attended Portland State University, where, as a member of the film society, he made his first animation – a yearbook promo that was accidentally shot upside-down, rendering it totally useless. In 1968, Plympton moved to New York City, where he studied at the School of Visual Arts and worked as an illustrator and cartoonist. One of his first animated shorts, Your Face (1988), was nominated for an Academy Award, beginning an Illustrious career that has included such high points as How to Kiss (1988), 25 Ways to Quit Smoking (1989), The Tune (1992), I Married a Strange Person (1997), Mutant Aliens (2001), Hair High (2004), the Oscar-nominated Guard Dog (2004), Idiots and Angels (2008), Cheatin’ (2013), Cop Dog (2017), Trump Bites (series, 2018-19), and Slide (2023). He shows no signs of slowing down.

Awards

Excellence in Writing, Independent Films, ASIFA-East Festival
Best Screenplay, Anima Festival
“Wicked little story.”
–NotComing.com

Requiem for Romance (2012)

Dir: Jonathan Ng, Canada, 8:00

 

A modern-day couple's phone call about the anguishing details of their relationship is juxtaposed with visuals of an epic battle in feudal China, where family influence, cultural pressures and their lust for adventure makes more sense. In this dream-like short film, love goes to war over art.

Bio

Jonathan Ng is a Toronto-born animation filmmaker based in Montreal. After studying traditional animation at Sheridan College and 3D animation at Seneca College, he wrote, directed and animated his first professional film, Asthma Tech (2006) at the National Film Board of Canada. There followed freelance work as a 3D pre-viz animator on such feature films as The Spiderwick Chronicles and The Mummy 3. Jonathan further pursued his animation filmmaking studies at Concordia University, where he experimented with different themes and media. Recent credits include animation department work for The Little Prince, April and the Extraordinary World, and Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank.

Jonathan received grants and financial support from SODEC, Canada Arts Council, BravoFACT, and the NFB for Requiem for Romance. He has received the Certificate of Excellence at the Chicago Children’s Film Festival, Best Short Film at the DC APA Film Festival, and several Teletoon scholarships.

 

When the Day Breaks (1999)

Dirs. Wendy Tilby & Amanda Forbis, Canada, 10:00

After witnessing the accidental death of a humanoid rooster, Ruby, a humanoid pig, seeks comfort from her everyday life in the city. Using pencil and paint on photocopies to achieve a textured look suggestive of a lithograph or a newsreel, the directors of this Oscar-nominated short create a tale at once whimsical and profound.

Directors’ Statement

When the Day Breaks is about the interior life of cities and the invisible ways in which we are all connected.

Awards

Grand Prix, Annecy International Animated Film Festival
Palme d'Or - Best Short Film, Cannes Film Festival
Grand Prize, Zagreb World Festival of Animated Films
Grand Prix, Hiroshima International Animation Festival

“Beautifully articulates truths about human existence, expressed through music, humor and innovative animation.”
-Take One

“Magical . . . we see the stranger's life take shape before our eyes.”
-The Globe and Mail

“One of the most acclaimed NFB shorts to come along in years . . . haunting.”
-The Gazette

Bio

Canadian animation duo Wendy Tilby (b. 1960) and Amanda Forbis (b. 1963), partners in art and in life, have been working together for more than 20 years. Originally from Alberta, they first met in Vancouver at the Emily Carr College of Art and Design. Most of their work has been undertaken in conjunction with the National Film Board of Canada, with which both have been associated for much of their professional lives. All three of their short animated films – When the Day Breaks, Wild Life (2011), and The Flying Sailor (2022) – have received Academy Award nominations. In 2018, they were recipients of ASIFA’s Winsor McCay Award for their “exceptional contribution to the art of animation.”

Overtime (2005)

Dirs: Oury Atlan, Breakbot & Damien Ferrié, France, 5:00

In this moving and life-affirming film, a troupe of small puppets find their creator, who has died, lying on his bench. Grief-stricken, the puppets at first refuse to accept the death of their master. Yet, in time, they come to understand his death and to move beyond their overwhelming sense of loss.

Director’s Statement (Q & A with Oury Atlan)

Q: What was the inspiration for this film?

A: First of all, the universe of Jim Henson, with many references to The Muppet Show. The photography is inspired by the cinema of the 1940s and 1950s, including movies like The Night of the Hunter and The Big Sleep.

Q: How did you divide the directing responsibilities?

A: I proposed the synopsis, then developed it with Damien and Breakbot. We all worked on the animation and modeling, but I mainly worked on the montage and lighting.

Q: What was the budget for the film?

A: It’s hard to say how much the film cost, because it was made as a student film. We used one computer per student to make the movie.

Q: Please talk about the source of the music. How did you find it? Was it planned from the very beginning of the project?

A: The music is Yiddish music from the 1950s. I found it just before we did the 3D animatic, at the beginning of the fourth year. We changed the direction of the film to fit the music.

Awards

Grand Prize for Student Film, Annecy International Animation Festival
Grand Prize, Krok Animation Film Festival
Best Graduation Film, Ottawa International Animation Festival

Bios

Oury Atlan, born in 1982 in Paris, studied art at Met de Penninghen in Paris, then animation at Supinfocom Valencienne, where Overtime was his graduation project. Overtime screened at many international film festivals and won prestigious prizes around the world. Atlan then worked for a year at Partizan Midi-Minuit as animation director on music videos and advertisements, in collaboration with Thomas Bernos. After meeting producer Ron Diamond, Atlan relocated to Hollywood, where he helped develop a feature adaptation of Overtiime and did character design and concept art for advertising spots. Since 2013, Atlan has been based in Israel, where he has recently served as the creative director for a number of virtual reality (VR) projects.

Breakbot (aka Thibaut Berland) was born in 1981 on the outskirts of Paris. He realized very early that he wanted to work in animation, taking classes in cinema and philosophy, and being influenced by the work of the great filmmakers. He trained at Supinfocom, where, with Oury Atlan and Damien Ferrié, he produced Overtime. After working on various films in the effects and animation departments, Breakbot became increasingly involved with music, where he’s become most recognized for his remixes. Among his best-known works are the 2010 single "Baby I'm Yours," featuring Irfane, and the studio albums By Your Side (2012) and Still Waters (2016).

Damien Ferrié studied Art History at Bordeaux University and drawing and illustration at the Emile Cohl School in Lyon, before enrolling at Supinfocom, where he created Overtime with Oury Atlan and Breakbot. After graduating, Damien went to Studio Aka in London, where he worked with director Marc Craste and, in 2005, he joined La Pac Production in Paris. Among his film credits, he served as a digital compositor on the Oscar-nominated feature I Lost My Body (2019) by Jérémy Clapin.

Father and Daughter (2000)

Dir. Michaël Dudok de Wit, Netherlands, 8:00

A father says goodbye to his young daughter. Time passes and the daughter moves through life, age by age. She becomes a young woman, has a family, and in time she grows old. Yet within her, there is always a deep longing for her father, with whom, in the end, she is – or appears to be – reunited.

Director’s Statement

The genesis of my short film Father and Daughter was surprisingly simple: I asked myself what I wanted to express most in my next short film, something more important than anything else. The answer was longing – the deep, quiet and seemingly permanent feeling of longing that I knew so well. To me, that feeling was painful, yet beautiful, and I trusted it. In the film, the longing was symbolized by the longing of a girl for an absent father. The story was not autobiographical, but in my imagination I could identify quite well with both the child and the parent.

Awards
Best Short Animated Film, Academy Awards
Grand Prix, Annecy International Animated Film Festival
Best Short Animation, BAFTA Awards

“For anyone who has experienced a last moment like this, and many of us have, the film strikes a chord. How often does one travel back to that spot, even if it is only in one's mind?”
– Maureen Furniss, AWN

Bio

Michael Dudok de Wit was born in 1953 and educated in Holland. In 1978, he graduated from the West Surrey College of Art in England with his first film, The Interview. After working for a year in Barcelona, he settled in London where he directs and animates award-winning commercials for television and cinema. His other short films include The Monk and the Fish (1994) and The Red Turtle (2016), both of which were nominated for Academy Awards and were variously honored with a César, an Annie Award, and the Cartoon d'Or, as well as major prizes at festivals, including Cannes, Cartoon Forum, Ottawa, and Hiroshima.