Uncle Thomas: Accounting for the Days
2019 · 13m · Canada
Directed by Regina Pessoa
Genres: animation, biography, essay film
Tones: contemplative, tender, whimsical
Animator Regina Pessoa pays tribute to her uncle Thomas, an eccentric everyday poet whose imagination and example set her on the path to becoming a filmmaker.
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Pessoa could've made a saccharine memorial, but instead she builds something genuinely strange—a hand-drawn fever dream where uncle and niece blur into each other, where 'eccentric everyday poet' actually means something, and where animation becomes the only honest language for that kind of filial haunting.
A masterwork of essayistic form: Pessoa situates herself in the lineage of autobiographical animation (Folman, Tsukumo) while treating the essay film as portraiture, her draftsmanship and rhythmic editing constructing both uncle and self through the same deliberate, meditative hand.
The singular choice here is Pessoa's decision to animate Thomas himself in her own drawing style—collapsing the distance between memory and present creation—which transforms what could be dutiful biography into something that *feels* like thinking about someone you've lost, not just documenting them.