Éxodo
2014 · 8m · Francia
Directed by Baptiste Roy, Kathleen Cartier, Nicolas Mrikhi, Sandrine Gimenez, Thomas Saez
Genres: animation, drama, fantasy
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, mythic
In a desert land, the final breath of a gigantic creature triggers the exodus of an entire people. They are forced to leave their home behind.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Five directors piloting a single narrative about collective mourning and displacement should be a disaster, but instead it's a willfully strange artifact—the seams are visible, the mythology refuses to resolve, and somehow that's exactly what makes it work.
A formally austere piece that channels apocalyptic literature into pure visual grammar: the collaboration itself becomes a statement about authorship and collective storytelling, and the restraint in not over-explaining the creature's death positions this squarely in the lineage of Tarkovsky and contemplative animation.
The decision to keep the massive creature mostly unseen—letting its presence exhale through landscape and movement rather than spectacle—turns an 8-minute animation into something that feels mythic without needing budget, just patience and a willingness to let emptiness carry the weight.