Big Trees
2013 · 12m · Canada
Directed by Ann Marie Fleming
Genres: animation, comedy, experimental
Tones: contemplative, darkly comic, surreal
A Vancouver woman's cherished ocean view is slowly blocked by leaves, and she considers how far she will go to reclaim her panorama, light, and happiness.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A woman's descent into ecological terrorism disguised as a property dispute—Fleming wraps genuine menace in pastel animation and dry wit, making you complicit in rooting for someone's increasingly unhinged act of spite against nature itself.
Fleming's command of animated form—the precise modulation of color and composition as the tree encroaches—situates this within a lineage of philosophical animation that uses visual constraint to explore existential cramping, recalling the measured surrealism of Wendy Tilby.
The decision to animate the woman's slowburn obsession rather than narrate it means everything lands through the tightening of her posture, the repetitive gesture of checking her view—one performance choice, rendered in ink, that transforms a silly premise into something genuinely unsettling.