Pies
2004 · 12m · Canada
Directed by Sheldon Cohen
Genres: animation, comedy, drama
Tones: humorous, tender, whimsical
Polish cow owner Mrs. Cherwak and German neighbour Mrs. Meuser clash over manure and competing ideas about cleanliness, until coffee and mincemeat pie lead toward an unexpected settlement of a feud about prejudice.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A premise about neighborly tension defused by pie sounds like Hallmark Channel pablum, but Cohen animates it with enough dry formal oddness—the manure obsession, the specificity of Polish-German friction—that it refuses to be cute; it's subversive in its refusal to punch down.
Pies sits gracefully in the lineage of allegorical animation about reconciliation and small-scale human conflict, executed with formal restraint and a script that trusts its own thematic economy—the kind of film that rewards close attention to what isn't said.
The decision to animate this as a folk-tale-adjacent piece rather than live action gives the manure and prejudice their full weight without heavy-handedness; Cohen's visual language makes the shift from hostility to communion feel genuinely earned rather than imposed.