Where Are You Now?
2020 · 8m · Albania
Directed by Eneos Çarka
Genres: animation, drama, experimental
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
Under lockdown and far from his son, a father keeps their bond alive through voicemails, rendered in retro-realistic 3D animation.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Voicemails as the spine of a lockdown drama feels almost too on-the-nose—except Çarka renders them in this deliberately artificial 3D that makes the intimacy *stranger*, not safer, which is genuinely unsettling in ways the premise shouldn't allow.
The retro-realistic 3D aesthetic situates itself against both photorealism and abstraction, a deliberate formal choice that echoes experimental animation's lineage while remaining formally legible—the kind of constraint that demands every frame justify itself.
That decision to use 'retro-realistic' 3D instead of live-action or pure animation is the whole film: it makes distance visible, makes the father's voice feel both closer and more irretrievable, which is exactly what eight minutes of budget and restraint can accomplish when one choice lands right.
Reviews
Its Retro-realistic animation style mimics real life and conveys the horrid message that life has become a digital replica of its previous version – a mere lifeless reflection of whatever essence it once carried. Instead of focusing on that aspect, however, Çarka chooses to support that even in semi-death family bonds exist, if they were there to begin with.