Paradaïz
2025 · 9m · Canada
Directed by Matea Radic
Genres: animation, essay film, experimental
Tones: absurdist, melancholic, surreal
Sarajevo-born artist Matea Radic returns in memory to a childhood city marked by war, where damaged homes, roaming snails, and explosive tomatoes become part of an animated search for what home means after displacement.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Radic walks a tightrope between earnest memoir and full absurdist sabotage—explosive tomatoes, roaming snails—but never quite commits to either, landing in a space that feels more tasteful than transgressive.
A formally precise work that knows exactly what it's doing within the essay-film tradition: the animated reconstruction of Sarajevo becomes a meditation on memory and home that sits confidently alongside Chytilová and Švankmajer, every surreal object placed with curatorial intention.
The decision to make the snails and tomatoes move with their own peculiar, almost documentary-like logic—not purely fantastical, not purely real—is what gives the displacement narrative its weight; a small formal choice that reframes the entire emotional architecture.