Father’s Letters
2024 · 12m · France, Russia
Directed by Alexey Evstigneev
Genres: animation, documentary, drama
Tones: melancholic, tender
Based on real letters, an imprisoned Soviet meteorologist writes imaginative tales to his young daughter from the Gulag, pretending he is on a grand voyage of exploration to shield her from the truth of his sentence as a traitor to the motherland.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Real Gulag letters from a Soviet meteorologist to his daughter, animated with mixed pastel, vector, and stop-motion techniques — the source material is staggering and the form-mixing is a genuine choice not a fallback. Twelve minutes. Yes.
Real Gulag letters animated with mixed pastel, vector, and stop-motion — the father pretending he is on a polar expedition to shield his daughter from his sentence — is precisely the kind of true archive the form can honor. Twelve minutes; the subject matter is irreplaceable.
12:10 based on real archived letters from a Soviet meteorologist in the Gulag to his daughter, told via mixed hand-drawn pastel, 2D vector, and stop-motion — that medium-shift maps to a father shifting between truth and invented voyage. The source-material integrity and mixed-technique conceit are both load-bearing strengths.
Reviews
A poignant tale of love, innocence, and hope as well as a stark reflection of the cruelty of the Gulag.
A painterly world that combines hand-drawn pastel elements, a two-dimensional vector-based technique, and stop-motion to bring a devastating true story of paternal love to vivid life.
Festivals
- Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival 2024
- Melbourne International Film Festival 2024, Best Animation Short Film
- StopTrik International Film Festival 2024, Student Jury Award
- Kaboom Animation Festival 2025, Special Mention
- Animafest Zagreb 2024
- Telluride Film Festival 2024
- Boulder International Film Festival 2025