My Little Goat
2018 · 10m · Japan
Directed by Tomoki Misato
Genres: animation, drama, fantasy, horror
Tones: dark, melancholic, mythic
A dark stop-motion retelling of the Grimm fairy tale 'The Wolf and the Seven Young Kids,' in which a mother goat rescues her children from a wolf's belly—only to find her eldest son missing, leading to a harrowing confrontation with trauma, identity, and predatory abuse.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Half-digested needle-felt puppets crawling out of a wolf's stomach as trauma allegory — 1.2 million YouTube views means it broke containment, and rightfully so. The Grimm-via-abuse-survivor angle is the kind of cozy-thing-weaponized I love.
Tomoki Misato turns the felted softness of needle-craft against itself, in the disquieting lineage of Jiří Barta and Jan Švankmajer; reimagining the Grimm tale as an allegory of abuse is bracingly direct. A 1.2M-view Geidai graduation film that has clearly found its audience for good reason.
Needle-felted puppets emerging half-digested from the wolf's belly is a perfect collision of cozy craft and allegory — Misato weaponizes the texture itself. 1.2M views on a Geidai grad film tells you the unsettling tonal mismatch is landing.
Reviews
Misato's warped and tactile approach to stop-motion is just as crucial in shaping the film's impact. The use of felt work gives an overall soft and innocent aesthetic, but the deformation crafted into the sheep warps the warmth of the material into something frightening and uncomfortable.
A wonderfully twisted tale in both visuals and allegorical storytelling. Misato weaves a narrative that is as haunting as it is allegorical, with themes of family, trauma, and identity emerging as the mother clings to the belief that she has found one of her missing children.
Festivals
- Short Shorts Film Festival & Asia 2019, Best Short (Governor of Tokyo Award)
- Festival International de Cinéma d'Animation de Meknès (FICAM) 2019, Best Student Film
- DigiCon6 ASIA 2018, GOLD Award
- Winter Film Awards 2020