me, me, me, me
2024 · 8m · Japan
Directed by Rina Ito
Genres: animation, experimental, surrealism
Tones: contemplative, dark, surreal
One day 'I' suddenly find myself transformed into something strange, and try again and again to peel off my skin and return to my original form.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A body-horror premise that refuses the catharsis of resolution—just endless, futile peeling—is exactly the kind of subversive loop that makes conventional narrative scouts squirm, and Ito knows it. This isn't surrealism for beauty's sake; it's surrealism as philosophical trap, which is the only kind worth watching.
Ito's formal precision in rendering repetition and skin-logic positions this squarely in the lineage of metamorphosis cinema—Švankmajer, early Aronofsky—but with a distinctly contemporary animation vocabulary that speaks to anxieties about self and boundary that feel urgently *now*.
The decision to animate the peeling itself—each layer texturally distinct, each attempt slightly different—is what transforms what could be a one-note concept into something that accumulates meaning; that micro-variation in repetition is the entire film, and it's executed with surgical precision on what must have been a modest timeline.
Festivals
- Hiroshima Animation Season 2024, Pan-Pacific & Asia Youth Competition Grand Prix