The Subject
2018 · 10m · Canada
Directed by Patrick Bouchard
Genres: animation, experimental, surrealism
Tones: contemplative, dark, surreal
An animator literally dissects his own body with a scalpel, pulling out symbolic objects tied to memories, emotions and fears as he works toward his heart to identify a burden he wants to cast off.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
Bouchard takes the confessional essay—supposedly animation's most exhausted form—and weaponizes it into literal self-dissection, pulling symbolic guts out of his own body like some gorgeous, grotesque magic trick that makes every earnest animator look cowardly by comparison.
A rigorous formal experiment that traces its lineage through body horror, personal documentary, and the Canadian animator's tradition of formal innovation, each scalpel cut a considered gesture in a carefully constructed visual argument about interiority.
The decision to animate the scalpel's work in meticulous, almost clinical detail—rather than cutting away or softening it—creates an unbearable intimacy that forces you to sit with discomfort as the actual subject matter, and that choice does all the heavy lifting.