In the beginning was the sea
2016 · 10m · France
Directed by Charlotte Arene
Genres: animation, experimental
Tones: contemplative, mythic, surreal
An animated retelling of the Book of Jonah as an inquiry into non-human perception.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Animated Book of Jonah from the whale's perspective as inquiry into non-human perception — that's actually a fresh take on a story I assumed was exhausted. ENSAD graduation films can be remarkable; this might be one.
Reframing Jonah to ask what the whale knows is genuinely original Biblical reading, and ENSAD graduation films have a reliable formal seriousness. Ten minutes is generous; the premise can hold it.
10:04 ENSAD graduation film, 38.5K views, score by Pierre Oberkampf — a Jonah retelling that gives the whale and the sea their own epistemology is conceptually serious. Animation school grad films at this length tend to commit fully to a single visual idea; the tags (jellyfish, plankton, whale) suggest it does.