Lead Me
2013 · 3m · France
Directed by Omar Meradi
Genres: animation, experimental, fantasy
Tones: surreal, theatrical, whimsical
Tiny whirling creatures flit through a world mixing schoolbook drawings, basketballs, and ever-present greedy little monsters, in a visually and musically captivating animated fantasia.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A three-minute fever dream that treats animation like a permission slip to ignore narrative logic entirely—schoolbook drawings strangling basketballs, greedy monsters as visual punctuation, a total refusal to explain itself. Everyone else will call it whimsical; I call it genuinely unhinged in the best way.
Meradi's formal control here is the real story: the collage aesthetic reads as deliberate constraint rather than chaos, each visual element layered with compositional precision that recalls experimental animation's lineage from Švankmajer through contemporary lyrical abstraction. The musicality of the cut patterns suggests a filmmaker thinking in sequences, not scenes.
The genius move is treating the greedy monsters as graphic texture rather than characters—they're not antagonists to overcome but part of the visual wallpaper, a single tonal choice that keeps the whole thing from settling into predictable fantasy beats. That decision alone transforms a premise into something genuinely disorienting on a budget.
Reviews
« Lead Me » (Emmène-moi) d'Omar Meradi est un film d'animation associant illustration et 3D, visuellement et musicalement captivant. le film mêle crayons scolaires, balles de baskets et petits monstres omniprésents et très gourmands.