La Plongeuse
2018 · 4m · France
Directed by Iulia Voitova
A professional diver, pushed to the brink of burnout by her coach's relentless demands, refuses to perform one more dive and escapes to a masseuse instead. The film uses oil pastel drawings and crumpled paper cut-outs to literalize her exhaustion — her body visibly crumpling in the paper medium.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Oil pastels and crumpled paper where the diver's body literally crumples in the medium — four minutes, no padding, the technique IS the meaning. Brief and exact.
Oil pastel and crumpled paper that literally collapses with the protagonist — Voitova achieves a phenomenology where medium and body are co-extensive, in the tradition of her La Poudrière forebears. Four minutes, no fat.
Oil pastel and crumpled-paper cut-outs where the diver's body literally crumples in the same paper material, with paper-rustling sound effects blurring medium and story — a 4:13 graduation film from La Poudriere that turns its constraint into its entire emotional argument. 36K views and 766 likes.
Reviews
Visually simple, but incredibly effective, Voitova employs a pared-down palette and minimalist backgrounds to bring her tale of a drained diver to screen. Voitova cleverly displays the diver's exhausted state by having her character literally crumple on screen.
Captures the total collapse and immobility of burnout and exhaustion, with anxiety visualized through tightly crimped paper as a creative metaphor.
Festivals
- Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival 2019
- Anima Brussels Animation Film Festival 2019
- Fantoche International Animation Film Festival 2018
- Anima Mundi 2019
- Poitiers Film Festival 2019