The Fire Next Time
2020 · 8m · UK
Directed by Renaldho Pelle
Tones: provocative, surreal, tense
On a London housing estate, rioting spreads as social inequality causes tempers to flare. As the community rebels, the oppressive environment takes on a life of its own — the shadows of the brutalist buildings literally close in around them, inspired by the 2011 London Riots.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
2011 London Riots through paint-on-glass plus 1:50-scale brutalist sets with projection mapping — that's the kind of technical maximalism that either swallows the politics or amplifies them. Eight minutes is mercifully short to find out.
Pelle's graduation film is a work of genuine civic anger, channeling the 2011 riots through a formally inventive animation that implicates housing policy and policing with equal ferocity.
Paint-on-glass character animation against 1:50-scale brutalist stop-motion sets with projection mapping — Pelle's making the architecture itself the antagonist of a 2011-London-Riots-inspired piece, which is a craft commitment that matches the politics. 8 minutes of that intensity should sing.
Reviews
One of the most exciting and original pieces of animation to emerge from the school — an institution already renowned for dominating the UK awards scene — in quite some time.
He takes an ordinary neighborhood scene — stores, apartment buildings, parks — and (literally and figuratively) sets it on fire.
Festivals
- Encounters Film Festival 2025
- Sundance Film Festival 2021
- Annecy International Animation Film Festival 2020
- BAFTA Film Awards 2021, Nominated