Ok, Call Me Back
2016 · 5m
Directed by Emily Ann Hoffman
Genres: animation, experimental, surrealism
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, surreal
Craving companionship, a woman leaves a voicemail late at night, and everyday objects take on new meaning in a lush world of gendered icons.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
The voicemail-as-emotional-portal is almost too precious, but Hoffman's refusal to show the person on the other end—letting gendered objects do the heavy lifting instead—is genuinely weird enough to work; it's a rejection of the obvious catharsis you'd expect.
A formally considered piece that sits comfortably in the lineage of feminist experimental animation, with careful attention to how symbolism and color grammar accumulate; the lush visual language demonstrates real control over tone.
That decision to animate everyday objects rather than the woman herself—to let a fork or a lipstick carry the vulnerability instead of a face—is the whole film, and it's executed with such restraint that the melancholy lands harder than it has any right to at five minutes.