The Shyness of Trees
2024 · 9m · France
Directed by Sofiia Chuikovska, Loïck du Plessis D'Argentré, Lina Han, Simin He, Jiaxin Huang, Maud Le Bras, Bingqing Shu
Genres: animation, drama, family
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
Hélène, in her forties, is unwilling to accept the inevitability of her ageing parent's death.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Seven directors collaborating on a film about aging and denial could've been a disaster, but instead they've made something genuinely unsettling—the animation style itself refuses comfort, mirroring Hélène's refusal to accept reality in ways that feel almost confrontational.
A formally precise meditation on mortality that sits comfortably within the lineage of contemplative animation (Laguionie, Ocelot), where the deliberate restraint in visual language becomes the entire argument about acceptance and inevitability.
The choice to animate trees as passive witnesses rather than metaphorical presences—letting them simply *be* while Hélène spirals—is the kind of quiet formal decision that transforms a familiar premise about grief into something that actually breathes.