The Burden
2017 · 14m · Sweden
Directed by Niki Lindroth von Bahr
Genres: animation, dark comedy, musical
Tones: absurdist, melancholic, surreal
Stop-motion animal-headed humans — naked mole rats, fish, rabbits — work soul-crushing service jobs in a highway-side shopping center, and cope with existential dread by breaking into auto-tuned musical numbers about loneliness and apocalypse.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
Auto-tuned naked mole rats singing about the apocalypse in a strip mall — Sweden said 'hold my aquavit' and made the most formally deranged musical short of the decade.
Niki Lindroth von Bahr's Cannes Quinzaine / Annecy Cristal winner is one of the great formal inventions of the decade — auto-tuned animal-headed laments in a highway retail purgatory, like Anomalisa rewritten by a Scandinavian theologian. Nothing else looks, sounds, or aches like it.
Annecy Cristal, TIFF Best International Short, Cannes Directors' Fortnight — auto-tuned apocalyptic laments sung by anthropomorphic animals in retail purgatory. Formally there is genuinely nothing else like it; this is one of the best shorts of the decade.
Festivals
- Annecy International Animated Film Festival 2017, Cristal for Best Animated Short
- Toronto International Film Festival 2017, Best International Short Film
- Directors' Fortnight (Cannes) 2017