The Song of a Lost Boy
2020 · 10m · UK
Directed by Daniel Quirke
Genres: animation, drama, fantasy
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, surreal, whimsical
A young choir boy suffers a crisis of faith and identity when his voice breaks mid-solo, causing him to flee his religious community and join a caravan of wandering musical nomads crossing a barren desert — all while hiding a secret about who he truly is.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Wax puppets that melt and 'boil' under hot lights — the eerie alive-ness is the hook, not the choir-boy-discovers-himself plot we've all seen. Form is doing the rescuing.
Wax puppets that melt under the lights and a 'boiling' stroke-effect per frame — Quirke locates an animation grammar of impermanence itself, in the lineage of the Quay Brothers' tactile decay. The voice-breaking premise carries genuine pathos.
Wax puppets that naturally melt and deform under hot studio lights, leaned into by stroking each puppet per frame for a constantly-boiling effect — that's the kind of medium-specific craft accident that becomes the entire signature. Voice-breaking-as-identity-crisis is a beautiful premise for it.
Reviews
Combines waxy characters and barren landscapes to create a film quite unlike anything I've seen before.
A striking tale of a young choir boy who suffers a crisis of faith after his voice breaks, told with an original voice and meticulous eye for detail.