Hoofs on Skates
2024 · 12m · Lithuania
Directed by Ignas Meilūnas
In a winter wonderland, two friends—Piglet and Cow—are ice-skating on a frozen lake when a strange and unfamiliar world cracks open underneath them. They must learn to deal with the otherness without letting fear rule.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Wordless puppet kids' film about a piglet and a cow encountering a stranger under the ice — competent, gentle, and squarely outside the territory I light up for. Fine for the demographic, not mine.
Dialogue-free Lithuanian stop-motion with ice skating as the encounter-with-otherness metaphor reads as gentle children's cinema in the Pingu lineage — pleasant, well-crafted, slight. The bar for stop-motion is high in 2025; this clears it without exceeding it.
Twelve minutes twenty-four of dialogue-free stop-motion using ice skating as a metaphor for encountering the unknown — Lithuanian puppet animation with an underwater fantasy world beneath the lake. Hard to fully evaluate without seeing the puppet work, but the conceit is clean.
Reviews
Really charming and you could feel a lot of love was put into it. The art direction and animation work are praiseworthy.
Two friends discover the joys of the ice—both above and below. From NYICFF Award-winning filmmaker and two-time Fest alum Ignas Meilūnas!
Festivals
- Palm Springs International ShortFest 2025
- Animafest Zagreb 2024
- New York International Children's Film Festival 2024, Audience Award Finalist (Ages 6+)
- Kaboom Animation Festival 2025, Audience Award for Best Kids Film
- StopTrik International Film Festival 2024, Young Audience Grand Prix (Ages 6-8)