Dark Dark Woods
2017 · 6m · Denmark
Directed by Emile Gignoux
Genres: adventure, family, fantasy
Young princess Maria has had enough of royal life — lessons, responsibilities and duties every hour of every day. Overwhelmed, she is swept into an adventure in the monster-filled dark, dark woods.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Princess-rebels-into-the-woods is basically every YA fantasy pitch ever, and Gignoux doesn't seem interested in breaking that mold—which is precisely why I'm not interested either.
A cleanly executed fairy-tale subversion with careful attention to tonal balance between whimsy and genuine darkness, positioning itself comfortably within the lineage of contemporary animated fables.
The decision to let the animation breathe in those woods sequences—spare backgrounds, character-driven movement, letting silence do more work than score—is what transforms a familiar premise into something that actually *feels* earned rather than assembled.