Yay
2021 · 2m · Germany
Directed by Anne Isensee
Genres: adventure, animation, family
Tones: contemplative, tender, whimsical
Lily Armstrong, Carla and Dubio live in a world of dark dullness until Lily discovers a world above full of light, color and adventure, and the three friends combine their strengths to emerge from the darkness together.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
It's a perfectly pleasant parable about finding light in darkness—which is to say it's exactly what you'd expect, and expects exactly what you'd think. Pass.
Isensee demonstrates formal control in the color palette's deliberate withholding and release, a visual grammar that places *Yay* squarely in the lineage of children's animation that trusts aesthetic restraint; the tenderness lands because the craft earns it.
That moment where the three characters' silhouettes first break into the light above—the decision to hold on their unified shape rather than cut to reaction—transforms a concept short into something with actual emotional architecture.