All These Creatures
2018 · 13m · Australia
Directed by Charles Williams
Genres: coming-of-age, drama
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, surreal
An adolescent boy narrates a fragmented recollection of a cicada infestation, his father's unraveling mental state, and the ambiguous force he believes inhabits all living things. The film explores memory, inherited illness, and the way children mythologize parental breakdown.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
Dad stops letting his kid call him 'Dad,' there are cicadas everywhere, and the narrator isn't the person you're watching — the Palme d'Or jury saw something in this mess of a memory and they were right.
Charles Williams won the 2018 Short Film Palme d'Or for this — the dissociated voiceover from the on-screen body, plus 16mm cicadas as inherited illness, is the rare festival short whose hype matches the craft.
Charles Williams's voiceover narrated by a different actor than the on-screen boy, with a cicada infestation working simultaneously as plot, metaphor for mental illness, and sound design — all on grainy 16mm. Short Film Palme d'Or 2018, earned.
Reviews
What sets Williams's piece apart is a sense of wonder in the smallest details.
Festivals
- Cannes Film Festival 2018, Palme d'Or – Short Film
- Toronto International Film Festival 2018
- Melbourne International Film Festival 2018