The Curious Child
2019 · 4m · United Kingdom
Directed by Howard Vause
Genres: animation, fantasy, surrealism
Tones: contemplative, surreal, whimsical
An inquisitive little girl asks 'But why am I alive?' - a question that takes her on a surreal, lifelong journey of discovery.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A kid asking 'why am I alive?' could've been maudlin, but Vause doesn't flinch from the surrealism—he lets it sprawl across a whole lifetime, which is genuinely perverse in its refusal to settle into easy sentiment or answers.
The film's formal architecture is what distinguishes it: a deceptively simple question becomes the organizing principle for a carefully constructed visual essay on becoming, with animation language that recalls both children's illustration traditions and experimental cinema's interrogation of form.
The decision to compress a lifetime of searching into four minutes through escalating surrealist imagery rather than linear narrative is elegant—it means every frame has to carry philosophical weight, and the animation style choice to stay deceptively childlike while the content deepens is what sells the whole thing.