Waste Away
2020 · 10m · USA
Directed by Elly Stern
Genres: animation, experimental
Tones: melancholic, mythic, surreal
A homeless woman in a trash-choked city swallows a discarded fish that comes alive inside her, dragging her back toward the natural world. A stop-motion fable about motherhood, waste, and the rot of modernity.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
Ten months of stop-motion to make a film about waste, the irony is the point and the craft is the argument. This is what slow cinema actually looks like.
Ten months of hand-built stop-motion in service of an ecological fable about a homeless woman swallowing a discarded fish is the kind of labor and conviction shorts rarely afford. Late Quay Brothers territory done with intent.
Ten months of hand-built stop motion on an ecological allegory is the kind of labor short-form rarely commits to — every frame as proof of intent. Quay-adjacent without the gothic preciousness, with a real political target.
Reviews
a reckoning, textured, evocative and surreal