Let's get ready to celebrate Animocje 2025 with a very unconventional program called "Roots Bloody Roots", a nod to Sepultura, the famous Brazilian heavy metal band. Choosing a series of WTF short films on the theme of "roots" was no easy task. Fortunately, animation is certainly the only medium that offers us endless imagination.
This set of nine unique animated works, directed by experienced authors and rising star students, can be considered (or not) as funny, freaky, tricky, crazy, loony and many other words that end with the phonetic sound [i:]. Once again, all these adjectives give us enless emotion possibilities we will share during this screening.
What would you do if you were stuck in a box? Are neglected things lost forever? Would you start a fire using your own body? What about being lost in the desert? Can teeth play music? Which reactions can a kid have in front of a hangman? What is your favourite cheat meal? What happens when you plant a seed on the top of your head? What kind of things do you have in your mind? To get the answers to these uncommon questions, there is only one solution : come and watch the beautiful films of the « Roots Bloody Roots » programme!!!
The Box, Dusan Kastelic, Slovenia 2017, 12’20”
You have probably heard of the phrase"To think outside of the box"?Well this is a film about such a box and the flat-headed creatures that live inside of it. Life in the Box is boring and miserable. Until one day when a new baby boy starts to grown in the middle of the Box! This baby is very different from other flat-headed inhabitants of the Box. He's happy, lively and curious. As the baby grows bigger and bigger, the flat-headed neighbours are becoming more and more annoyed with him.Until one day when he literally grows over their heads…
Teeth, Tom Brown & Daniel Gray, UK 2015, 6'00"
Things of worth are often neglected in favour of that which might be more immediately gratifying. Unfortunately, the things that are neglected are often lost forever, irreplaceable. This is the story of a man with a misguided and intense focus – one which started in his youth and carried on to old age. His life events are chronicled through the loss of his teeth – and how his obsessive efforts to amend what was damaged bring on yet further destruction.
Timber, Nils Hedinger, Switzerland, Switzerland 2014, 5'35"
A group of logs is about to freeze to death in a cold, icy desert. When they realize that the only fuel for a warming fire is their own body, things start heating up.
O Cacto, Ricardo Kump, Brazil 2022, 10'24"
A man, troubled by a severe nervous system disease, finds himself paralyzed in a remote and hostile environment after an accident. His situation takes new directions as he surrenders and accepts his new reality. An horror film inspired by Santiago Dabove (Argentina, 1889 - 1951) short story "Ser polvo".
Ernesto, Corinne Ladeinde, UK 2011, 7'00"
Seven Year old ERNESTO feels left out when he realises he's the only kid in school with a full set of milk teeth. When his efforts to fit in fail miserably, he resorts to drastic measures to get rid of them; his teeth however have other plans…
Stuffed, Louise Labrousse, France 2024, 10'27"
Olla, 24, decides to take a moment for herself. Her "cheat meal", an instant noodle soup, awaits her on a small tray above a warm bath. However, nothing goes as planned, and Olla accidentally ends up spilling the tray and its contents into the bathtub. Disaster...
Mandragore, Sarah Lavorel, France 2021, 3'50"
In a dark clearing, a boy watches as his father is publicly hanged, leaving him frozen in terror. As the villagers return home, he remains rooted at the gallows. Time passes, shadows lengthen, and efforts to pull him away fail. The hanged man’s body rots, but the child does not move. A forest witch approaches at night, performing a ritual with a red thread tied to his wrist. At dawn, he wakes, finds her hand bound to his, and accepts her invitation to move. But as his foot lifts from the ground, he screams in unbearable agony.
Atama Yama, Koji Yamamura, Japan 2002, 10'00"
After a stingy man eats some cherry seeds, a cherry tree grows on his head and he gets into a lot of trouble. This animated film is a modern interpretation of the traditional Japanese Rakugo story "Atama-yama" set in contemporary Tokyo.
These Things in My Head – Side A, Luke Bourne, UK 2018, 10'50"
A fully hand drawn and painted visualisation of the daily thoughts and worries on my mind as they interlink with the playful sounds of a record to conjure a new journey based somewhere underneath actual events.
Sébastien Sperer has worked for the Annecy International Animation Film Festival during 25 years from 1999 to 2024. This child overflowing with infinite dreams ad-libs his way from one specialty to another: programmer, selector, moderator, curator, jury member, speaker, and so on. Wherever he is, his desire is to make animation, this medium in which anything is possible, accessible to all; a kind of village hang-out where human experience exists unfiltered and unrestrained. Fascinated by the mobilizing power inherent in the magic of film, his leitmotiv is: “Promoting intercultural understanding through the use of animated film, dialogue and transmission”. He's talso eaching history of animation at Gobelins Annecy since 2022.
