Shopping Trip
2020 · 3m · United Kingdom
Directed by Barry Wilkinson
Genres: animation, drama, experimental
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, surreal
A monochrome nocturnal trip to the shops during the pandemic: a man navigates a store haunted by the lingering shadows of lockdown.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Everyone's making pandemic allegory right now, but Wilkinson's monochrome restraint and the way he lets shadow DO the emotional work instead of just wallowing in it—that's the contrarian move that actually lands.
A formally precise study in negative space and duration; the film knows exactly what it owes to the lineage of anxious, minimalist animation while refusing sentiment, letting the nocturnal geometry of an emptied store become its own meditation on absence.
The decision to shoot monochrome in 2020 could've been lazy thematic shorthand, but Wilkinson commits so completely to shadow and silhouette as the actual narrative that it elevates what's clearly a modest production into something architecturally rigorous.