Oedipus
2011 · 13m · Canada
Directed by Paul Driessen
Genres: animation, comedy, satire
Tones: absurdist, darkly comic, surreal
The Oedipus myth is retold backwards as an absurdist animated parody, turning the familiar Greek tragedy into a tragicomic reversal.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
Driessen takes the most canonical story in Western drama and explodes it backwards into absurdist slapstick—it's the kind of formal sabotage that makes you wonder why nobody thought to do this sooner, and it shouldn't work but absolutely does.
A sophisticated interrogation of the Oedipus myth that situates itself knowingly within both classical tragedy and the lineage of irreverent animation, using formal reversal as a syntax for meaning-making rather than mere gag delivery.
The decision to animate the myth in reverse isn't just a narrative gimmick—it fundamentally reshapes how causality and inevitability read visually, and Driessen's spare animation style makes that structural inversion do all the narrative heavy lifting on a modest frame.