Deneb
2026 · 5m
Directed by Jules Guérin
Genres: animation, experimental, fantasy
Tones: contemplative, mythic, surreal
A cosmic creation myth told through tears, stars, lovers, serpents, and birth in this experimental animated short.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A cosmic creation myth sounds like exactly the kind of precious, self-serious premise that usually makes me want to scream—but Guérin somehow makes the serpents and tears *earn* their weight, which is either a miracle or a trick I'm still mad I fell for.
Deneb situates itself in a lineage of animated cosmogonies stretching back through mythology into modernist abstraction; what distinguishes Guérin's approach is the formal discipline of distilling birth, desire, and divine architecture into five minutes without sentimentality.
The choice to anchor a myth about creation through the grammar of tears—as both image and literal material—transforms what could be generic fantasy into something that feels genuinely earned and specific to animation as a medium.