Blackheads
8m · USA
Directed by Emily Ann Hoffman
Genres: animation, comedy, drama
Tones: absurdist, darkly comic, tender
Sofia, freshly heartbroken, navigates the aftermath through anxious skin-picking and sessions with a therapist who's somehow worse than the breakup. Told via stop-motion and 2D animation, with gender politics smuggled inside the pores.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
Animated, bodily, and refuses the polite breakup-movie playbook. Hoffman keeps making the stuff other animators are too prim to draw.
Stop-motion and 2D animation literalizing the gross intimacy of self-soothing — Hoffman smuggles gender politics inside the pores, Hertzfeldt cut with Signe Baumane. Real animation craft.
Stop-motion and 2D animation deployed to literalize the gross intimacy of self-soothing rituals — gender politics smuggled inside the pores. The medium choice is doing real conceptual work, not just style.