Anansi The Spider
2025 · 5m · Jamaica, USA
Directed by Jared Hall
Genres: animation, family, fantasy
A small spider who likes to talk big insults Tiger, the king of the jungle. Instead of being eaten, Anansi is given a bet: capture the dangerous Snake or be devoured. Against all odds, Anansi succeeds through cunning trickery and earns the title keeper of the jungle's stories.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Five minutes of fluid morphing animation drawn from West African and Jamaican folklore — Anansi stories are inherently good and the visual conceit of webs blending into stripes is the right idea. Solo-director scale that wears its limits well.
Continuous fluid transformation as the visual language for trickster-folklore — webs blending into stripes blending into foliage — is precisely the right formal answer to Anansi material, in the Cartoon Saloon tradition. The CalArts experimental version may be the more interesting cut; the audience numbers are small but the craft instinct is right.
Hand-drawn animation where Anansi's web blends into Tiger's stripes and leaves morph into Snake — that continuous-transformation visual language is the right formal device for West African folklore. Five minutes is tight for the conceit, and only 367 views means it's still finding its audience.
Reviews
Fanciful, colorful, and concise.
An imaginative treat for animation lovers with artful, vibrant hand-drawn animation and fluid transformations.
Festivals
- Slamdance Film Festival 2025
- European Short Film Festival 2024, Best Animated Short Film
- Film Invasion Los Angeles 2024, Filmmakers Award – Outstanding Short Film (Animation); Outstanding Cast Performance Animation
- Los Angeles Animation Festival 2024
- Portland Film Festival 2024
- Seattle Film Festival 2024
- FistUp Film Festival 2024