Biciklisti
2018 · 7m · Croatie
Directed by Veljko Popovic
Genres: animation, comedy, sports
Tones: humorous, sensual, whimsical
In a small Croatian seaside town, two rival cyclists battle the heat, the hills, and each other for the trophy — and for the favors of a scantily clad woman watching from her window — until the arrival of a giant cruise ship and its mysterious captain upends the race.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A sports comedy that hijacks its own genre midway through by dropping a cruise ship captain into a Croatian cycling rivalry—it's exactly the kind of premise that makes you go 'wait, WHAT?' and then actually lands the tonal whiplash. Most scouts would've stopped at 'two cyclists and a woman in a window,' but Popović said no, let's break the whole thing open.
The film's formal restraint in its opening third—the clean geometry of the race, the deliberate sensuality of the framing—gives it enough classical grounding that when the surreal element arrives, it reads as a knowing disruption rather than chaos. A small, precisely constructed animation that understands how to earn its own weirdness.
The decision to animate the entire piece in a clean, economical style lets Popović pivot genres without losing coherence; that restraint is what makes the cruise ship's arrival feel genuinely consequential rather than just absurdist window-dressing. It's a film where the *choice* to keep the visual language consistent is what holds the whole impossible thing together.
Reviews
Avec une impressionnante fluidité, ce court-métrage nous fait circuler de leurs songes à la course en jouant sur plusieurs techniques d'animation, de séquences au crayon très épurées à d'autres bien plus chargées. Biciklisti, ce très beau film reste avant tout léger et drôle, parfois absurde.