Flora Borealis
2021 · 10m · USA
Directed by Casey Friedman
Genres: animation, experimental, LGBTQ+
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, mythic
In a crumbling post-apocalyptic high-rise, two gay men subsist on fast food while one wants out and the other has given up. Threaded through their story is a fable about a melancholic botanical glassblower mourning his wife.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
Queer apocalypse with a glassblowing fable inside it. I came in cynical about another 'post-apocalyptic' anything and left thinking about plant anatomy. Good trick.
Friedman nests a glassblown-plant fable inside a queer-apocalypse drama — animated, melancholic, mythic in registers Don Hertzfeldt would respect. The double-layered structure is the formal ambition.
Nested fable structure: queer apocalypse in a crumbling high-rise wrapped around a fairytale about a botanical glassblower mourning his wife. Animation as the medium for the embedded story-within-a-story, with both registers carrying real grief, is hard to pull off in one short.
Reviews
A striking animated film that uses a post-apocalyptic setting to explore themes of destruction and perseverance.
Festivals
- Jacob Burns Film Center Creative Culture 2021