One Last Time
2023 · 3m
Directed by Jaimi Qiu
Genres: animation, coming-of-age, drama
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
Two childhood friends reunite one last time at their hometown's creek.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
A three-minute animation about two friends saying goodbye at a creek—sounds like every coming-of-age short ever made, and it probably is one, which means I'm already bored and haven't even pressed play.
The restraint here feels deliberate; animation as a formal choice to hold distance rather than exploit sentiment, which situates it thoughtfully within the lineage of contemplative character studies—though the execution would need to justify that conceptual rigor.
Three minutes of animation hinges entirely on whether Qiu found the exact moment—a glance, a silence, a single gesture—that makes "one last time" feel specific rather than inevitable, and everything else serves that choice.