Les Bêtes
2025 · 12m · USA
Directed by Michael Granberry
Genres: animation, fantasy, horror
Tones: dark, mythic, theatrical
A mysterious rabbit bearing magic keys convenes strange creatures to perform before a wicked king — a dark stop-motion fantasy using 250 puppets salvaged from abandoned projects.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
The film situates itself directly within a lineage running from Starevich to the Brothers Quay — it is precisely the kind of work that belongs in a serious archive of animated short cinema.
250 salvaged puppets, Starevich homage, magic-key rabbit before a wicked king — this is a craftsman working in obvious love with a tradition. Vimeo Staff Pick at Annecy is the right shelf for it.
250 puppets salvaged from abandoned projects, in direct dialogue with Starevich's taxidermied-insect work from the 1910s — Granberry's stop-motion is a love letter to a nearly extinct lineage and a Vimeo Staff Pick Award winner at Annecy. The puppet-rescue origin alone is its own argument for craft fidelity.