Chado
2020 · 7m · United Kingdom
Directed by Dominica Harrison
Genres: animation, coming-of-age, drama
Tones: melancholic, tender, whimsical
During a long, hot summer in an enchanted Russian forest, a young child is forced to grow up when her dog falls ill and her mother returns out of the blue with a new lover and unsettling news.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
A coming-of-age that refuses to weaponize its sadness — the real subversion here is that the mother's return and the dog's illness are almost beside the point, background weather for a child learning to sit with ambivalence. It's aggressively uninterested in catharsis, which means it sticks with you.
Harrison's animation carries the weight of Russian fairy tale tradition while maintaining formal restraint; the enchanted-forest setting could collapse into sentimentality, but the editing holds emotional distance, letting each frame breathe with the clarity of a Pushkin illustration.
The decision to animate the summer heat itself — that shimmering, almost tactile quality to the air and light — transforms what could be a familiar grief narrative into something physical and specific; it's the visual texture that does the heavy lifting on a modest scope.
Reviews
Dominica Harrison's short animation Chado is both a magical journey into an enchanted Russian forest and an exploration of first experiencing emotional turmoil at a young age. It boasts a beautiful, heartbreaking story too which concerns a young child spending a long hot summer at a grandparents before being confronted by her returning mother who brings unsettling news.