The Story of Three Sisters, or How the World Came to Have Four Seasons Instead of One
2024 · 7m · France
Directed by Raphaëlle Bourgon, Anchi Huang, Vega Lázaro, Son Tra Le, Priyam Parikh, Jianuo Wen, Di Wu
Genres: animation, coming-of-age, fantasy
Tones: contemplative, mythic, whimsical
Three goddess-sisters — Ida, Mae and Tee — maintain a perfect, unchanging world until middle sister Mae's curiosity draws her into the forbidden real world, introducing change, growth and mortality into eternal spring.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Seven directors wrestling a creation myth into 7 minutes sounds like committee hell, but somehow this lands as genuinely strange—Mae's fall into mortality feels like a Trojan horse for the real subversive move: that stasis isn't peace, it's a kind of death the film won't let you unsee.
The structural audacity here is in the restraint: a mythological scaffold that could bloat into grandeur instead tightens into something that dialogues with everything from Ovid to Miyazaki, all while the seasonal shift operates as both literal and spiritual transformation with the rigor of a fable.
The decision to let Mae's curiosity play out through visual discovery rather than dialogue—watching her encounter texture, change, consequence for the first time—is the hinge the whole film turns on, and it's a choice that makes the animation's constraint feel like its greatest asset.
Reviews
This film's blend of pastel animation, 2d artistry, and stop-motion technique evokes the visual lyricism of Fantasia and the delicate touch of Chinese animation master Te Wei, and it is a surprisingly mature work for a student film. It resonates with a gentle yet profound message, celebrating growth, renewal, and the power of transformation that change brings.