BusLine35A
2020 · 6m · Denmark
Directed by Elena Felici
Genres: animation, dark comedy, drama
Tones: contemplative, darkly comic, tense
Three bus passengers are trapped in their own anxieties while a disturbing situation escalates in the back seat — and none of them do anything. An animated indictment of the bystander effect.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Roy Andersson-style deadpan animation as a bystander-effect indictment on a five-minute bus ride. The lineage is dangerous to claim but if it lands at all, this is exactly the back-row register.
Felici names Roy Andersson and Hertzfeldt as her lineage, and the deadpan visual grammar of bystander-effect critique earns those comparisons — The Animation Workshop graduation films consistently punch above weight class. A precise object.
The Animation Workshop graduation film at 5:50, distributed by Miyu — Felici cites Andersson and Hertzfeldt as direct lineage, and the bus-as-bystander-effect-stage compresses that grammar to its core. Tiny audience (4.5K) but the formal pedigree is real.
Festivals
- Manchester Film Festival 2021, Best Student Film
- Animafest Zagreb 2021, Special Mention