A szív kertje (The Garden of Heart)
2023 · 11m · Hungary
Directed by Olivér Hegyi
Genres: animation, drama, fantasy
Tones: surreal, tender, tense, whimsical
A young aspiring painter riddled with self-doubt arrives for his final interview at the Academy of Fine Arts. While he waits, his inner demons manifest as parasitic garden pests, turning his imagined inner garden into a surreal, psychedelic parade of anxiety.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Art-school anxiety as a psychedelic parade of garden parasites — that's the kind of weird only Hungarian animation reliably delivers. Naive style is a choice and I trust it.
Hegyi's deliberately naive style for an art-school-anxiety subject performs the very tension it depicts, recalling Bruno Bozzetto's mid-century freedom of line. A clever conceptual loop.
10:32 of Hegyi designing, animating, scoring AND sound-designing his own art-school-anxiety film — that level of solo authorship is what gives the deliberately naive style its credibility, since insecurity-as-aesthetic only works when one voice is steering it all. 10.3K views and 338 likes confirms it landed.
Reviews
Hegyi's fondness for Naive art is the perfect match for the narrative — a 'simplistic' style that couldn't be more fitting for a story about an artist wrestling with self-doubt. The film's relatability is one of its most endearing qualities, making it almost impossible not to empathise with the protagonist's worries.
Festivals
- POFF Shorts International Short Film and Animation Festival 2023, Best Short Animation
- Animafest Zagreb 2023, Jury's Special Award
- Kecskemet Animation Film Festival 2023, Best Animated Short Film
- CINANIMA International Animated Film Festival 2023, Best Short Film Over 8-16 Minutes
- BFI London Film Festival 2023