Opulent Round Edible Object
2024 · 6m · USA
Directed by Evan Forrest Mann
Genres: animation, comedy, experimental
Tones: absurdist, surreal, whimsical
A boy discovers a mysterious glitch that allows him to exchange cotton balls for cookies, unraveling a surreal and absurd origin story for Oreos told through a blend of live-action, stop-motion animation, and sloth costumes.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
$2K Oreo origin myth shot with the director's family dressed as sloths, fully improvised, no script. This shouldn't work but I already love it.
A two-thousand-dollar improvised sloth-suit mockumentary praised by Short of the Week as the year's most enjoyable — charming, surely, but the lineage is YouTube absurdism rather than anything curatorially load-bearing. Technically inventive, emotionally thin.
Short of the Week's quote — "one of the most enjoyable viewing experiences you'll find online this year" — combined with the $2K budget, family-as-cast (the kid lead is the director's son Basil), and no-script improv approach is the small-budget craft miracle I look for. 5:52 of stop-motion sloths is exactly the kind of unhinged that earns it.
Reviews
Delivering one of the most enjoyable viewing experiences you'll find online this year, the film features a blend of live-action, stop-motion animation, and sloth costumes.
Nominated for Weirdest Short Film of 2024, this documentary about the unexpected origins of a certain famous cookie is not approved by Mondelez International.