ACID RAIN
2019 · 26m · Poland
Directed by Tomek Popakul
Genres: animation, coming-of-age, drama
Tones: dark, melancholic, surreal, tense, whimsical
A teenage drifter meets the feral Skinny on a bridge and is pulled into a Day-Glo odyssey through Poland's 1990s underground rave scene — mushroom picking, a woodland rave, and a disturbing climax.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
Polish animation went to a 1990s rave and came back with a 26-minute Oscar-longlisted nightmare — Popakul used broken motion-capture like it was the whole point.
Popakul's motion-capture roughness is the entire point — this is the Eastern European rave-decade rendered with the queasy plasticity of memory itself. Twenty-six minutes is bold for a short and he earns every one; closer to Aleksandra Korejwo than to Trainspotting.
Twenty-six minutes of Tomek Popakul deploying deliberately imperfect mocap as the AESTHETIC for a Polish 1990s rave coming-of-age — the visual roughness IS the argument. Cannot wait to see this one.
Festivals
- Rotterdam International Film Festival 2019
- Sundance Film Festival 2019