Animated Shorts

The shorts this year were a bit erratic - some great, some weird, and at least one that i still don't know what it was about. Every year with the shorts, there is one category that is all over the place in terms of quality, and this year, that honor goes to the animated shorts. 

Beautiful Men
Nicolas Keppens and Brecht Van Elslande

Three brothers go to Turkey for hair transplants on a particularly foggy weekend. One of the brothers is hiding a secret - while he thought he had booked transplants for all of them, he accidentally only booked one. Over time, we see that each carries different kinds of personal insecurities, but beneath it all, they care for each other deeply.

In the Shadow of the Cypress
Shirin Sohani and Hossein Molayemi

Ok, so here's what I've got for you - a husband and wife are living by the sea and he is living with tremendous PTSD from the war, and is occasionally violent with his wife. Soon, a whale beaches itself, and the wife is obsessed with saving it, and while the husband is also trying to help, he is confronting his own demons. That's about all I can tell you - I have no idea what this movie was. (sorry)

Magic Candies
Daisuke Nishio and Takashi Washio

Poor Dong Dong never gets asked to play but he has a rich inner life. He buys a set of candies with patterns that appear to be familiar, and when he eats them, he goes on the wildest drug trips ever in a children's short. The sofa comes alive, his grandmother returns to him as bubble gum and with each new conversation, he learns a little bit more about empathy, especially for the father who loves him very much.

Wander to Wonder

Nina Gantz and Stienette Bosklopper

Speaking of crazy ass drug trips, Mary, Billybud, and Fumbleton are tiny people on a children's show who one might assume are CGI, but are in fact real. They starred with a full sized human person, who we discover is dead, leaving them to figure out how to feed themselves. (And the big fire scene was a little "too soon" for my taste.) This one was a little creepy and very weird, but also very clever, just not the best of the lot.

Yuck!
Loïc Espuche and Juliette Marquet

Kissing! Who would ever want to do that? YUCK! But when a little French boy meets a pretty cute little French girl, the act may become irresistible. The problem is, in this world, when you are ready and willing to kiss, those little lips light up in Barbie pink telling the world how you're feeling. This poor boy, shunned by his friends, discovers that eventually, everyone wants a bit of lip lock and he is not alone.