Butterfly Jam
2021 · 6m · France
Directed by Shih-Yen Huang
Genres: coming-of-age, drama
Tones: contemplative, melancholic
A young woman describes her father and his many neglected pets; the animals die one after another as the family falls apart.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Everyone expects the dead pets to be metaphor for family collapse, but Huang just... lets them be dead pets, which somehow makes the whole thing weirder and more honest than the obvious reading would've been.
A formally restrained piece that situates itself squarely in the lyric-essay tradition—the voiceover carries the weight while image and sound work in deliberate counterpoint, recalling a lineage of essayistic shorts concerned with memory and domestic dissolution.
The genius move is letting the narrator's tone stay almost detached while describing each animal's death—that refusal to perform grief is what makes the accumulated loss devastate, and it's a single performance choice that reframes the entire emotional architecture.