A Tire d'Aile
2024 · 2m · France
Directed by Lisa Bugnon, Hélène Bonnardot, Chloé Pontieux, Elise Gauthier, Thibaut Cantel
Genres: animation, coming-of-age, horror
In a small church, Esther, an ill-at-ease teenager, attends mass with her mother Josie. As the priest's sermon drags on, she sees the parishioners transform into farm animals, terrifying her and driving her to flee.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
A collective effort that commits fully to the bit—religious discomfort transmuted into literal monstrosity—and doesn't wink at the camera once; the surrealism lands because it's earnest, not clever.
A formally restrained descent into dread that recalls the animation lineage of Švankmajer and Plympton, where ecclesiastical space becomes the container for psychological rupture, executed with admirable compositional control across its two-minute span.
Five directors at the helm could've meant chaos, but the decision to hold Esther's point-of-view steady while everything warps around her—never cutting away from her horror—is what transforms a genre conceit into something genuinely unsettling on a shoestring.