The Little Soul (Duszyczka)
2019 · 9m · Poland
Directed by Barbara Rupik
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, surreal
A tiny soul emerges from a rotting corpse on a muddy riverbank and sets off on a journey through a post-mortem realm, encountering other departed souls along the way and forming a bond with the soul of a horse before their paths diverge.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Cannes Cinéfondation III Prize, Slamdance Grand Jury. Oil-paint-on-plasticine for flesh texture, tiny soul emerging from a rotting corpse. The technique-as-thesis is doing actual work here. Polish animation is on a tear and Rupik is part of it.
Barbara Rupik's Cinéfondation prize-winner and Slamdance Grand Jury winner — oil-painted plasticine for flesh against clay for spirit, where the material choice IS the metaphysics. A rare instance of medium-as-theology.
Rupik's mixed-media assemblage is a genuine material argument: the oil-painted plasticine flesh and object-animation bones aren't just textures, they're a craft vocabulary matched precisely to a film about what remains when the body falls apart.
Reviews
DUSZYCZKA is one of the boldest and most memorable shorts I've seen in 2021.
Festivals
- Festival de Cannes 2019, 3rd Prize Cinéfondation (ex-aequo)
- Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival 2021
- Krakow Film Festival 2021