Raw Data
Jake Fried’s mythologically-charged hand-drawn animations made with white-out, gouache and coffee have won the attention of arthounds from PBS to Juxtapoz with their kinetically layered one-minute mania.
Flesh
The faces and impressions surrounding an animal sacrifice in Columbia are brought to life in an animated reconstruction from actual video archive footage that counters the profane with the abstract.
The Sad House
Fantastic Fest Alumna Sofia Carrillo (BLACK DOLL) returns with her most ambitious stop-motion film yet: the epic history of a family beset upon by war, illness and death, told with antiquated trinkets on a single dilapidated desktop.
Sleep Clinic
This WTF animated short made for New Zealand’s 48Hrs Furious Fimmaking Challenge spends six mind-melting minutes entrenched in the desperate delusions of an insomniac. The most essential psychiatric fantasy musical since ON A CLEAR DAY YOU CAN SEE FOREVER.
Guilt
In this promising debut from Lithuanian animator Reda Bartkute, a nervous female fox retreats into the shifting landscape of her subconscious to face a shadowy doppelganger.
Breakfast on the Grass
A hilarious claymation take on the making of a masterpiece, brought to us by students of acclaimed Estonian animator Priit Parn.
Drunker than a Skunk
Animation vet and Fantastic Fest fave Bill Plympton’s latest is a wily adaptation of Walt Curtis’ 1973 poem 'The Time The Drunk Came To Town And Got Drunker Than A Skunk, Or So He Thought', about a roving drunk who is brutally tormented by mean-spirited townsfolk.
Ziegenort
A fishboy living in a coastal village resorts to shocking behavior when shunned by his peers. Making great use of manufactured chiaroscuro lighting and striking color flourishes, this award-winning short is a dramatic slice of teen angst at its most nightmarish.
Woman Who Hates Plants
This woman really doesn’t like plants.
We, the Masses
In a snowy landscape after an unnamed cataclysmic event, a lost man looks for signs of civilization, falling in with an anarchic smattering of humanoids whose destructive impulses are at odds with his need for transcendence. Based on drawings by artist Robyn O'Neil, this fourth short from former member of Irish animation collective Delicious 9 Eoghan Kidney is a disquieting journey through the machinations of social trauma.
Kick-Heart
The latest from anime outlaw Masaaki Yuasa (MIND GAME) is a candy-colored story of secret obsession: professional wrestler Maskman M derives masochistic pleasure from being pummelled by his Amazonian opponent Lady S, who clearly reciprocates in savouring their violent public trysts. But do they have a chance in the real world?
Retrocognition
A brilliant and disturbing pastiche of melodramatic 1940s radio dramas, former Texan Eric Patrick’s distorted domestic characters - with their cracked faces and murderous longings - offer an uncanny underside to the idyllic nuclear family.
