Bob's Funeral
2024 · 18m · USA
Directed by Jack Dunphy
Genres: animation, comedy, documentary
Tones: darkly comic, melancholic
Filmmaker Jack Dunphy secretly films his estranged grandfather Bob's funeral, hoping to uncover the source of generational trauma in his fractured family. The film blends documentary interview footage with cutout animation to paint a portrait of two contrasting families and a father-son rift that outlasted death.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A formally inventive hybrid documentary that uses animation not as decoration but as an instrument of memory — exactly the kind of work that demonstrates the short form's unique capacity for personal essay.
Sundance Best Nonfiction Short, secretly filming an estranged grandfather's funeral with cutout-animation flashbacks — the hybrid form is justified by the personal stakes, not the other way around. Reluctant yes.
Sundance Best Nonfiction Short winner, secretly filming an estranged grandfather's funeral and remixing it with cutout animation to externalize family mythology — Dunphy's hybrid form lets him excavate grief through visual absurdism rather than confessional voiceover. 18 minutes of that calibration is a high-wire act he apparently sticks.
Reviews
Bob's Funeral taps into the viewer's emotional state by capturing grief in both a positive and negative way.
Festivals
- Sundance Film Festival 2024, Short Film Jury Award: Nonfiction