Many of our submissions, including many finalists in each category, set their story in outer space. Is it more fun to animate a world without the rules of gravity? Maybe, but I don’t think that’s at play for every storyteller. Two of our favorites, Tom by Felippe Steffens, and It Was Only A Rock that Looked Like Someone by Matisse Gonzalez, used the dark void of space to keenly express how a physical separation from loved ones, from anyone, has a huge emotional impact.
Tom is a film I still think about. Tom is a dog that maintains a space station alone. Watching him perform his daily ablutions, his maintenance tasks, all alone, without the ability to respond to potential rescue, sent me into a spiral of existential dread, only further intensifying when filmmaker Steffens reveals how Tom got there in the first place. We highly recommend you watch Tom as soon as it’s available for public viewing, but first, get your tear ducts reinforced.
Director Matisse Gonzalez, who lives in Mexico, was inspired to create the short is based on her feelings of nostalgia and homesickness to her home back in Bolivia. In a brief interview with Gonzalez, I learned that she “wanted the astronauts to experience this isolation and loneliness as extremely as possible and so I sent them the furthest away as I could: outer space.”
“It was definitely very fun to animate in space. I wish we gave more time to research so that we can really see how objects, sounds, people really act in space. Our short is definitely very far away from reality or science, as there is no sound in space, so most of the short would be impossible. For me space has a big philosophical meaning, more than a fun one, if I can put it that way.”
It was very effective! Especially when we see glimpses of the family life back home that the astronauts miss. This scene is so endearing:
Gonzalez took home the trophy for Best Comedy at FLAnimation 2021!