Skin for Skin
2017 · 15m · Canada
Directed by Kevin D.A. Kurytnik, Carol Beecher
Genres: animation, dark comedy, historical
Tones: contemplative, dark, mythic
In 1823, the governor of a vast fur-trading empire drives animal slaughter to the brink of extinction, until nature exacts a terrible price.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Dark comedy + animation + ecological collapse should feel gimmicky, but Kurytnik and Beecher refuse the easy laugh—they let the mythic absurdity of greed-meets-consequence breathe, which is exactly the kind of tonal restraint that makes subversion actually work.
A formally rigorous fable that knows its debts to both cautionary animation and colonial-era moral theater; the 15-minute shape is exquisite—tight enough to feel like a parable, expansive enough to register as genuine historical reckoning.
The decision to animate rather than document gives them the freedom to make the governor's hubris literally visible in abstraction, and that formal choice—treating greed as a shape-shifting visual problem—is what makes this resonate beyond its period setting.