A Kind of Testament
2023 · 16m · France
Directed by Stephen Vuillemin
Genres: animation, drama, thriller
Tones: dark, surreal, tender, tense
A young woman discovers animations on the Internet created from her private selfies. A stranger with the same name confesses to identity theft, but death arrives before the mystery is resolved.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Six years in production blending memoir intimacy with body-horror animation about deepfake selfie identity theft — Berlinale premiere, 47 awards, that level of resource on weird material almost always pays. Vuillemin sounds like the real deal.
Vuillemin's six-year-in-production debut about animated selfie identity theft, premiered at Berlinale with 153 selections and 47 awards, places him squarely in the major-emerging-voice category alongside Bruno Collet or Sander Joon. Evidently essential.
Berlinale 2023 premiere, 153 official selections, 47 awards, 16:24 — Vuillemin's six-year debut blending memoir intimacy with body-horror animation about digital identity theft is the kind of patient solo work that builds its own visual language. 73.6K views and 512 likes on Vimeo is strong for a difficult film.
Reviews
Merging the intimacy of a memoir with a body horror twist, Vuillemin opts for a quieter, more insidious kind of tension, with unsettling moments that embed themselves in memory.
A remarkable short film that feels like a collaboration between David Cronenberg and Junji Ito, exploring themes of identity and paranoia through striking animation.
Festivals
- Berlinale 2023
- Fantasia International Film Festival 2023, Satoshi Kon Award for Best Animated Short Film
- Animafest Zagreb 2023, Zlatko Grgić Award
- Film Fest Gent 2023, Best International Short Film
- Filmfest Dresden 2024, Golden Horseman for Best Film Sound