Father
2012 · 17m · Bulgaria, Croatia, Germany
Directed by Ivan Bogdanov, Moritz Mayerhofer, Asparuh Petrov, Rositsa Raleva, Dmitry Yagodin, Veljko Popovic
Genres: animation, documentary, drama
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
An animated documentary in which six directors each animate a different real-life testimony, turning reality upside down to stage the impossible dialogue between a child and a father — the conversation that never happens. Based on authentic interviews conducted by Diana Ivanova and supervised by Ivan Bogdanov.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Six directors animating the same void—a conversation that can't happen—should be a mess, but instead it's this elegant refusal to settle on one truth about absence; most people would've made it a sentimental grief-piece, and Bogdanov et al. chose something weirder and more honest.
A formally sophisticated anthology that treats the animated documentary form as a vehicle for philosophical inquiry, where the multiplicity of styles becomes the argument itself—each director's approach to the same impossible dialogue writes a chapter in the genealogy of how cinema stages the unspeakable.
The genius move isn't the six-director concept; it's trusting that real testimony, filtered through six distinct animation vocabularies, needs no narration or editorializing to land—the decision to let contradiction and style variation do the emotional work is what transforms interviews into something ceremonial and unbearably specific.
Festivals
- DOK Leipzig 2012, Golden Dove for Animated Film
- Annecy International Animation Film Festival 2012
- Animafest Zagreb 2012
- Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival 2013
- Chicago International Children's Film Festival 2012, 1st Prize for Animated Documentary Film