I Miss Hugs
2021 · 8m · UK
Directed by Ana Songel
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
A young woman who has emigrated and her single-parent mother back home navigate the loneliness of distance, forging new ways of expressing affection across the separation. An autobiographical stop-motion short from a Spanish director living in Scotland.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
It's a premise that could've been maudlin—homesick daughter, distant mother—but Songel refuses the expected emotional crescendo; instead, she lets stop-motion's inherent slowness become the whole point, which is either brilliant or self-indulgent, and I'm genuinely unsure which.
Songel positions herself squarely in the lineage of personal animation—Cartoon Saloon's emotional restraint, the Eastern European tradition of object-as-feeling—and executes with a formalist's discipline: every material choice (textile, clay, found objects) reads as deliberate syntax rather than sentiment.
The decision to build the mother-daughter connection through tactile, handmade materials—so that distance itself becomes textured and palpable rather than abstract—is the engine that makes seven minutes of quiet longing actually breathe.
Reviews
The touching story of a single parent and her relationship with her only daughter. After migrating to another country, the young woman has to create a new sense of affection with her mother back home.
A touching depiction of loneliness and emotional attachment, with mother and daughter dealing with the struggles of their new lives away from each other by forging a new sense of affection.
Festivals
- Glasgow Short Film Festival 2022
- Spark Animation Festival 2022
- Aesthetica Short Film Festival 2022
- Underwire Festival 2022
- World of Film International Festival 2022, Best Animation Short
- The HB Film Festival 2022, Best Scottish Animation
- Athens Animfest 2022
- Animaze Montreal International Animation Festival 2022