The Burden (Min Börda)
2017 · 14m · Sweden
Directed by Niki Lindroth von Bahr
Genres: animation, comedy, drama, musical
Tones: absurdist, contemplative, darkly comic, melancholic, surreal
A dark stop-motion musical set in a soulless commercial strip where anthropomorphic animals — fish in a hotel, tap-dancing mice in a fast-food restaurant, monkeys at a call center — cope with the drudgery and existential emptiness of modern consumer life by breaking into elaborate, cheerful song-and-dance numbers that belie their despair.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Stop-motion existential-dread musical with anthropomorphic animals working dead-end shifts — this is the only kind of musical I'd voluntarily watch. Yes.
Niki Lindroth von Bahr's Roy Andersson-by-way-of-stop-motion existential musical is one of the defining animated shorts of the past decade — that the apocalypse functions as 'tempting liberator' tells you the tonal register. Indispensable.
Fourteen minutes of stop-motion anthropomorphic animals in a commercial strip breaking into cheerful Hollywood-style song-and-dance numbers about existential meaninglessness — Niki Lindroth von Bahr is one of the great deadpan miniaturists, and the dissonance between musical jauntiness and apocalyptic lyrics is the whole architecture. A canon piece.
Reviews
An existential musical that came across as Terry Gilliam meets Ingmar Bergman as its surreal hybrid beings sang about the difficulty of relationships, or dehumanizing pressures of office life.
A beautifully melancholic short-film masterpiece that radiates a sense of pervading sadness. It's amazing the kind of deep reflection a singing fish can provoke.
Festivals
- Cannes Film Festival - Directors' Fortnight 2017
- Annecy International Animated Film Festival 2017, Cristal for Best Animated Short
- Toronto International Film Festival 2017, Best International Short Film
- Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival, Best Animation
- Guldbagge Awards, Best Short Film