Udahnut zivot (Imbued Life)
2019 · 12m · Croatia
Directed by Ivana Bosnjak Volda, Thomas Johnson Volda
Genres: animation, drama, fantasy
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, surreal
A young woman obsessed with taxidermy discovers rolls of undeveloped photographic film hidden inside the brains of the animals she restores, drawing her into a haunting meditation on consciousness, memory, and the thin border between the living and the dead.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Taxidermist finds undeveloped film inside animal brains, with in-camera stop-motion water nobody else attempts. The technical insanity alone earns curiosity — Svankmajer comparison is well-deserved.
Bošnjak and Johnson animated water in-camera in stop-motion — a near-impossible feat — for a taxidermist who finds undeveloped film in animal brains. Svankmajer's true heirs, working with patience and uncanny intelligence.
Built a physical model lake and animated water in-camera with stop-motion — that's an almost-unheard-of technique because water is notoriously uncontrollable in puppet animation, and the choice to do it for real is the entire ethos. Svankmajer/Quay comp is earned, not flattering.
Reviews
The overriding sense of calm and patience that bleeds from every sequence, even when the short is at its most strange and haunting.
This powerful and evocative short film...brings her world exquisitely to life through the mobilization of atmosphere and materiality, resulting in a tactile and unsettling story.
Festivals
- Internationale Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen 2019
- Annecy International Animation Film Festival 2019
- Animafest Zagreb 2019
- Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival 2020
- Stuttgart International Festival of Animated Film 2019
- Paris International Animation Festival 2019, Special Jury Prize
- Tabor Film Festival 2019, Best Film
- Anibar International Animation Festival 2019, Best Film
- London International Animation Festival 2019