Roger
2016 · 8m · España
Directed by Arnau Gòdia, Ingrid Masarnau, Martí Montañola, Sara Esteban, Sonia Cendón
Genres: animation, drama, fantasy
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, whimsical
Roger is the protagonist of an animated action series; an accident during filming leaves him out of the series, replaced by one of his doubles and forgotten in a corner of discarded characters, until he meets someone who helps him see things differently and find a way to act again.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
A film about a forgotten stunt double finding meaning in obsolescence sounds like therapy-speak, but the five-director collective actually pulls off something genuinely strange—the meta-animation layer where Roger's only reality is the one he's been replaced in is subversive enough to make the sentiment land.
The nested narrative structure—a character designed to be disposable discovering agency within the frame of his own narrative disposal—sits in deliberate conversation with puppet cinema and the uncanny lineage of animated self-reflexivity, executed with compositional restraint.
The decision to keep Roger's character model static while the world around him shifts and reanimates creates this devastating formal economy: one unmoved sprite becomes the entire emotional argument, and suddenly eight minutes of modest animation carries the weight of a feature study on replacement and invisibility.