Brontosaurus
2021 · 8m · USA
Directed by Jack Dunphy
Genres: animation, dark comedy, documentary
Tones: contemplative, darkly comic, provocative
While completing an animated film, the director reckons with a morally complicated entanglement with his collaborator.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
First-person animated doc reckoning with sexual ethics through pencil drawings, with comments like "bulimia is tough" and "I cant stop watching this" — that's the real-life response of someone genuinely shaken by a confession, and Dunphy has the goods. Yes.
Dunphy's pencil-drawn reckoning with sexual and professional ethics — built on the True/False and Florida Film Festival circuit, with confessional comments from viewers wrestling with their own bulimia — is genuinely the Hertzfeldt-meets-confessional-essay register handled with rigor. Eight minutes; the form earns its difficulty.
8:19, 42.7K views, 401 likes, mature-tagged, Official Selection at True/False (the doc fest that matters here) — Jack Dunphy's first-person animated reckoning with collaborator ethics is the real deal, and the comments section ('there is something so honest about this') confirms it lands. Hand-drawn confessional doc is a specific tradition; this is in it.
Festivals
- True/False Film Fest 2021