The Treasure of the Grotoceans
1980 · 15m · Canada
Directed by Co Hoedeman
Genres: animation, family, fantasy
Tones: theatrical, whimsical
Two foam-rubber octopus-like Grotoceans are sent on a special underwater mission in search of treasure and encounter a series of surprises, in a puppet fantasy carrying a message about ecology and conservation.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A puppet fantasy dressed up in conservation messaging—the kind of thing that feels like it's trying to have its cake and preach about it too, which somehow works because Hoedeman's committed enough to the weirdness that the ecology angle never feels grafted on.
Hoedeman's foam-rubber grotesquerie sits squarely in the National Film Board's tradition of tactile, formally inventive animation; the theatrical staging and measured pacing suggest a filmmaker thinking seriously about how puppet bodies move through constructed space—this is craft that knows exactly what it's descended from.
The decision to work in foam rubber instead of something more refined forces a particular kind of performance physicality—loose, almost clownish—that makes the environmental stakes feel earned rather than imposed, turning material constraint into the film's emotional center.