Room with a Sea View
2019 · 12m · Estonia
Directed by Leonid Shmelkov
Genres: animation, dark comedy, romance
Tones: absurdist, darkly comic, surreal
Herbert arrives in a seaside city on a long work trip and falls for a strange, beautiful flower-shop saleswoman — but his insomnia, once soothed by watching billiards on TV, won't let him sleep.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A romance that uses insomnia and billiards-watching as the actual love story — most scouts would've smoothed that weirdness into cute meet-cute, but Shmelkov doubles down on the surreal logic and dares you to follow him there.
The film's formal precision in its animation and tonal control—how it holds both romantic tenderness and absurdist dislocation without letting either dominate—places it in conversation with European avant-garde romance, a lineage it clearly understands.
The decision to keep the billiards TV as the anchor of Herbert's emotional world—not a quirk, but the actual center of gravity—reframes the whole love story and does more emotional work on a 12-minute animation budget than most features manage.
Reviews
This intriguing, wacky, weird animated short film is a magical journey into the strange realms of insomnia. Super odd and imaginative, like an animated Kaufman movie. It has that Kaufman mix of psychosis and ennui caused by societal expectations.