PANDY
2013 · 12m · Czech Republic
Directed by Matúš Vizár
Genres: animation, dark comedy, satire
Tones: absurdist, darkly comic, surreal
An animated account of the panda's evolutionary history that satirizes both humanity's relationship to nature and the commercialization of endangered species, following a panda's passage from extinction-threatened isolation in the wild to a captivity defined by celebrity, drugs, and spectacle. The film offers a darkly comic vision of the panda's future.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Cannes and Annecy laureled, dystopian mock-natural-history of pandas. Eleven and a half minutes of lurid 2D animation operating between ecological commentary and grotesque. The form announces itself and delivers — Vizár's later work confirms the talent.
A Cinéfondation third-prize winner whose ferocious satirical imagination belies its graduation-film origins — the Czech-Slovak co-production tradition at its most uncompromising.
Matúš Vizár structures the film as a mock-natural-history epic of pandas from prehistory to dystopian future, deploying lurid 2D animation that slides between ecology and grotesquerie. Cannes and Annecy awarded; the satirical span is unusually wide.
Festivals
- Cannes Film Festival – Cinéfondation 2013, 3rd Prize
- Annecy International Animation Film Festival 2013, Special Distinction