FLEDGELINGS
2025 · 4m
Directed by Alyssa Anderson
Genres: animation, coming-of-age, family
Tones: contemplative, tender, whimsical
Four feathered childhood friends bond over their shared obsession with dinosaurs. One day, the pressures of growing up threaten to tear them apart.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
It's a coming-of-age film about birds obsessed with dinosaurs, which should feel gimmicky—and honestly, it almost does—but Anderson resists the urge to make the dinosaur fixation ironic or meta, which is the only move that could've saved it.
A assured work in the tradition of hand-drawn character animation that understands how restraint in visual storytelling—four friends, one crisis—can hold emotional weight; the film's formal discipline in its 4-minute structure suggests a director already thinking in traditions larger than herself.
The entire film hinges on a single sound design choice—the way the dinosaur obsession gets sonically layered and then stripped away as the friendships fracture—and that one decision transforms what could've been saccharine into something genuinely unsettling.