2024 Oscar Nominated Short Films Animated

“Pachyderme”, by Stéphanie Clement

This animated short film tackles the delicate subject of family incest and repressed memory. It is very colorful and uses a more traditional method of animation. The main character is a little girl in the south of France who visits her grandparents in the countryside. Her adult self says she doesn’t like when her mother leaves and speaks of battling monsters in the narrative. She often spends time with her grandfather, but also, she is alone on a swing set or in a lake. The “pachyderme” reference of the title is of a large elephant tusk that is in the house as a trophy which seems to reference the monster that we never see. Any inappropriate actions are only barely hinted at on screen. The only sense of something being wrong is the disconnected way that the girl is drawn. The film effectively creates mixed feelings from the audience.

“WAR IS OVER! Inspired by the Music of John & Yoko” by Dave Mullins and Brad Booker This animated short is also done in a traditionally drawn manner and depicts an alternate version of World Way I with long periods of inaction in the trenches. The nationalities of the warring sides seem to be generic not representing any specific combatants, but they are obviously different from each other. The action centers on a carrier pigeon that flies from one side of the trenches to the other while carrying chess moves written on a scrap of paper. A soldier from each of the two countries are having a chess match that moves one turn at a time whenever the pigeon makes its journey. The action starts out very slowly and gradually builds generating more interest from the other soldiers until the match is interrupted when the order comes for the assault to begin. The climax comes when the two opposing soldiers meet face to face on the battlefield with one recognizing the notes with the chess moves written on them. It is only at the end of scene when John Lennon’s familiar song “Happy Christmas (War is Over)” plays that we see the inspiration for the short that gives hope for a time when war can become a thing of the past. We may have forgotten that Lennon’s song was originally a protest against the war in Vietnam.