Flower Found!
2017 · 7m · Netherlands
Directed by Jorn Leeuwerink
Genres: animation, dark comedy, drama
A mouse discovers a beloved flower in the woods, but when it runs home to fetch a watering can and returns, the flower is gone. A sympathetic bird rallies a growing mob of forest animals to hunt down the culprit, culminating in a devastating case of mistaken identity with irreversible consequences.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Pastel storybook woodland that pivots into mob violence and irreversible wrong-doing. Six and a half minutes, no waste, deeply Dutch — I keep coming back to this one.
Leeuwerink's hard pivot from pastel children's-book to mob-violence parable is the gesture — a Bambi-as-witness-to-fascism formal trap. The audience-arrest is real and necessary.
Pastel children's-book opening hard-pivoting into mob-violence parable — at 6:46 with 39K views the bait-and-switch is the engine, and the I Want My Hat Back lineage suggests it understands how innocence-aesthetic weaponization actually works. Bambi comp is bold.
Reviews
An utterly bleak indictment of mob hysteria.
A cute thing that turns dark — the darkness grows organically out of the cuteness.
Festivals
- KLIK Amsterdam Animation Festival 2017, Best Animated Student Short
- Kyoto International Film and Arts Festival 2018, Animation Grand Prix
- Taichung International Animation Festival 2018, Grand Prix of Student Shorts
- Anima Brussels 2019, Best Student Short Film
- Annecy International Animation Film Festival 2018
- Ottawa International Animation Festival 2018
- Animafest Zagreb 2018