Confetti

The scouts

Hand-drawn surrealism about deflated joy should be insufferable, but Bonaiuto's refusal to resolve the fever dream—just lets it *sit* in its own melancholy—is genuinely unnerving in a way that makes you distrust your own comfort.

The film's lineage traces back through Švankmajer and a particular strain of European animation that treats the grotesque as formal language; Bonaiuto's restraint with color and her rhythmic editing choices situate her in conversation with that tradition without genuflecting to it.

The decision to let the hand-drawn figures move in that slightly staccato, almost resistant way—not quite fluid, not quite stop-motion—transforms what could be generic surrealism into something tactile and unsettling, and that single choice does all the emotional work.

Reviews

Another very deep journey into hand-drawn chaos and with this lurching drunken logic that worked really perfectly for me.

Fever dreaming indeed, of surreal pseudo-narrative.

Festivals

• Fest Anca 2025