The Sun Is Bad
2023 · 3m · USA
Directed by Rachel Mow
Genres: action, animation, comedy
Set in Hong Kong during the late 1980s, a temperamental girl blames the sun for melting her city and sets out to destroy it using toys and whatever she can find. A kinetic, nostalgic 2D animation made by Hong Kong-born SCAD students.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Three minutes of hand-drawn 1980s Hong Kong nostalgia channeled through a child's tantrum at the heat — neon signs and the Jumbo Floating Restaurant in three minutes is a real specificity flex. Charming, slight, well-deployed.
Hand-drawn 1980s Hong Kong nostalgia — neon, Jumbo Floating Restaurant — filtered through a child's outsized rage at summer heat is a deft formal choice for a SCAD student film. Three minutes; specific, affectionate, brief by design.
3-minute hand-drawn 2D recreation of 1980s Hong Kong (neon signs, family shops, the Jumbo Floating Restaurant) at SCAD — at that runtime the loving recreation of place IS the film. Autour de Minuit picked it up for VOD, which is real distribution.
Reviews
The three-minute video was the result of a year of hard work, taking a total of 32 script changes, and every eight seconds of animation needed two months to produce.
The short clinched top prizes at Animation Dingle in Ireland and the French Institute Alliance Française's Animation First Festival, and was nominated for a Student Emmy and Student Academy Award.
Festivals
- College Television Awards 2023, Nomination
- The Rookies Awards 2023, Film of the Year
- Animation Dingle 2024, Top Prize
- Animation First Festival 2024, Top Prize
- RiverRun International Film Festival 2024, Best Student Animated Short
- Charlotte Film Festival 2024
- Atlanta Film Festival 2024