Nevada
2017 · 12m · United States
Directed by Emily Ann Hoffman
Genres: animation, comedy, drama
Tones: contemplative, darkly comic, melancholic
After a broken condom, a young couple — Zoe and Eli — must confront emergency contraception, the uneven bodily burden, and whether they can imagine a future child together.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Nevada dodges the expected sentimental trap by making the emergency contraception pill itself a character—something between body horror and dark comedy—which is exactly the kind of premise inversion that makes consensus scouts squirm.
Hoffman's control of tone across animation, comedy, and intimate drama suggests a filmmaker aware of how experimental form can serve rather than obscure the material, situating this within a lineage of formally adventurous relationship cinema.
The decision to animate this conversation—to literalize the interior panic as visual language rather than dialogue—is the move that transforms what could be a generic couple's-conflict short into something that only works because of that single, gutsy formal choice.
Reviews
It's Nevada's unconventional approach to telling a relationship drama that makes it so compelling. Hoffman's unique visual approach—a combination of wire armature puppetry and hand-drawn facial expressions—give the material a much needed spark.