A Hand to Hold
2021 · 2m · United States
Directed by Stacey Davis, Ali Clark
Tones: contemplative, tender
An animated visual poem tracing the connective thread of handholding between a parent and child across the stages of life. Based on a poem by Stacey Davis, with illustration by Vero Vanblaere and animation by Ali Clark.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A two-minute meditation on handholding feels like the safest possible subject, which is precisely why it's boring—sentiment dressed up in watercolor and call it poetry, and everyone nods along.
Davis and Clark have constructed a formally exquisite object here, each illustrative frame a deliberate gesture in a lineage of animated verse that treats the domestic gesture as worthy of sustained formal attention, the kind of restraint that reads as maturity.
The decision to let Vanblaere's hand-drawn line remain imperfect and slightly trembling beneath Clark's animation—refusing to smooth it into polish—is what makes this ache the way it does, a single formal choice that turns sentiment into something earned.
Festivals
- Brooklyn Film Festival 2021
- Nantucket Film Festival 2021
- Sidewalk Film Festival 2021
- Edmonton International Film Festival 2021
- BendFilm Festival 2021
- Charlotte Film Festival 2021
- Tallgrass Film Festival 2021
- Orlando Film Festival 2021
- Evolution! Mallorca International Film Festival 2021
- Cucalorus Film Festival 2021
- Lagos International Festival of Animation 2021