OBON
2018 · 15m · Germany
Directed by André Hörmann, Anna Samo
Genres: animation, documentary
Tones: contemplative, melancholic
Animated documentary tracing the testimony of Akiko Takakura, one of only ten survivors within 500 metres of the Hiroshima atomic blast, as she narrates finding a moment of happiness amid total destruction.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
OBON is exemplary documentary animation in the truest sense — testimony given form without distortion, the historical catastrophe held with the care it demands — and the vault would be diminished without it.
Hiroshima survivor's testimony animated using actual survivor drawings — refusing to aestheticize the catastrophe is an ethical and formal choice that takes courage. Krakow Silver Dragon. Yes.
Hörmann and Samo refusing to aestheticize Hiroshima by grounding their visual language in survivors' own (untrained) drawings — Krakow Silver Dragon, ASIFA East Best in Show. That's an ethical formal choice carrying a moral one.
Reviews
The father-daughter hand-washing scene is one of the best scenes in this gripping, strikingly haunting film.
Festivals
- Krakow Film Festival 2019, Silver Dragon — Best Short Animated Film
- ASIFA East Animation Film Festival 2019, Best In Show
- CINANIMA — International Animated Film Festival of Espinho 2018, Grand Prix
- MINIMALEN Short Film Festival 2019, Best International Film
- Full Frame Documentary Film Festival 2019, Best Short Film