Playing Ghost
2011 · 10m · United Kingdom
Directed by Bianca Ansems
Tones: contemplative, melancholic
A mother and daughter each deal in their own way with the recent death of the father.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Grief-processing drama dressed up in animation—it's the kind of tasteful, expected move that makes most shorts feel like polished therapy sessions, and this one doesn't subvert that formula hard enough to earn the restraint.
Ansems constructs a formally disciplined study of how abstraction through animation language can hold space for two simultaneous mourning processes without collapsing into sentimentality; the restraint is architectural, not evasive.
The decision to split the visual treatment between mother and daughter—letting their animation styles drift apart as their grief diverges—is the hinge that makes a familiar premise feel urgent and specific rather than didactic.