There Were Four of Us
2021 · 10m · USA
Directed by Cassie Shao
Genres: animation, experimental
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, surreal
Four figures gathered around a table interrogate 'who did it?' after a family death, the inquest dissolving into dreamlike vignettes drenched in grief. Shao stages mourning as an abstract animated seance.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A whodunit where the body is a feeling and the suspects keep dissolving into paint. Shao won't let you grieve cleanly and I respect her for it.
Cassie Shao stages mourning as an abstract animated seance — whodunit format as vehicle for processing a family death through painterly motion. Hertzfeldt's lineage, Suzan Pitt's texture.
Avant-garde animation where a whodunit format becomes a vehicle for processing a family death through abstract painterly motion — Cassie Shao using genre scaffolding for grief is a smart structural move.
Reviews
Shao's stunning visuals are delivered with a masterly sense of color, composition and motion, rendered alongside vivid sound design...