Between Walls
2015 · 8m · Danemark
Directed by Sara Jespersen Holm
Genres: animation, family, fantasy
Tones: melancholic, tender, whimsical
A blocked writer tries to compose a poem while the negative energy he radiates materializes as black crows that only his young daughter Millie — who has a luminous paper-bird friend of her own — seems able to see.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
The premise wants to be profound—writer's block as literal black crows, the daughter's paper bird as counterweight—but it settles into a fairly conventional metaphor for emotional toxicity instead of pushing into genuine weirdness; feels like a TED talk about depression that someone animated.
Formally composed and tonally assured, with clear visual language distinguishing the father's crow-realm from the daughter's luminous space; the film knows exactly what it is—a measured, illustrative exploration of intergenerational emotional burden in the tradition of Scandinavian pastoral animation.
The singular choice here is the decision to filter the father's despair through the daughter's *perception* rather than showing us his interior directly—that narrative inversion, plus the specific contrast between black crows and the paper bird's warm glow, does the emotional work without sentimentality.
Reviews
À la fin de ce conte poétique et touchant vu au Festival Anima de Bruxelles, le père retrouve l'inspiration, découvre l'oiseau et prend sa petite fille dans ses bras. Les murs et la grisaille ambiante font place à la tendresse entre les deux personnages et au lien retrouvé.