We Are Human, After All
2016 · 17m · Czech Republic
Directed by Jan Míka
Genres: animation, drama, fantasy
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
During a harsh winter, a wild hare struggling against cold, hunger and hunters discovers the comfort of domestic rabbits' lives.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
It's a fable about choosing comfort over freedom—which should be predictable—but Míka refuses the expected moral, leaving the hare's decision genuinely unsettling rather than heartwarming; that refusal is the only interesting move here.
A formally composed meditation on domestication and belonging that sits in dialogue with centuries of animal fable tradition, executed with the kind of restrained animation that trusts silence and negative space over sentimentality.
The single stroke that makes this work is the decision to keep the wild hare's face obscured or distant throughout—when it finally turns toward the warm burrow, we're reading yearning through posture alone, and that physical restraint transforms what could've been maudlin into something genuinely tender.
Festivals
- Annecy International Animation Festival
- Premiers Plans d’Angers
- Trento Film Festival
- KROK International Animated Film Festival