An Animated Mother-Son Tragedy: The New Animation Short and Locarno Winner ‘Melk’ by Filip Anthonissen (Interview)

A fish, a mother, a son, and a lot of misguided villagers. This could have been the logline of the new 3D computer-animated film 'Melk' by the Belgian Filip Anthonissen (a KASK Ghent graduate in his first short animated film), which recently won the Pardino d'Or Arts3 Foundation for the Best International Short Film at the 79th Locarno Film Festival.

The 15-minute 'Melk', the first animation short to win this prize, also received the Locarno Short Film Candidate nomination for the European Film Awards, and is now one of the shorts to watch during this year's award season.

The Story and theme of the Animated ‘Melk’

Produced by Animal Tank (which has also produced Nicolas Keppens' 'Beautiful Men'), the tragedy-inspired film follows an elderly woman living with her adult son in a remote 19th-century village. But the mother looks for consolation for her growing-up son in a fish. An accidental fish death, jealousy, drunkenness, and everything escalates to mind-blowing consequences.

"I was inspired by Greek tragedy, and the idea that the tragedy is self-inflicted in some way," Filip Anthonissen tells Zippy Frames. Having already been an emerging video artist & VR professional (his 2017 multi-screens installation VR project 'Wanner is dan?' (when is it?) was selected for the Start Point Prize in Prague), he wanted to work with the concept of the storytelling itself: the stories we tell ourselves, the stories we project onto our loved ones, and the roles we (think we) have to play in a society.

The Locarno jury has certainly embraced the film's storytelling abilities and its repercussions. In their jury statement, they embraced its "wonderfully strange, masterfully crafted and deeply moving portrait of how far we can go for the love of a parent".

The film builds on the mother-son relationship and its tragic consequences, but is more than that. "In a way the mother is a reflection of the wider environment, of the town and its people," Anthonissen explains. "Without the town, the mother wouldn’t be ashamed of her son, and then the son would feel less of a need to please her."

This is a fictional, 19th-century society, with its own mores (dancing) and prejudices. While the film was initially set in the Middle Ages, its author moved it to more contemporary times -yet he feels these incidents could take place today as well in "a small, sheltered town where not much changes, including in the way of thinking".

‘Melk’ and its 3D Space

The film's showcasing digital, 3D animation characters prescribed its own space. Initially intended for more extensive use, but budget limitations meant the mo-cap was used only to record the characters' more complex movements (e.g., the dancing scene). But the immersive character of 'Melk', already found in Anthonissen's earlier works, still shows.

"I usually just start making images and animations inspired by the themes and concepts without a script or storyboard. With an installation, the viewer would walk in at any point in the screening and leave whenever they want, so there’s no need for a strict linear form of storytelling.

With a narrative short, you have the full attention of your viewer for a set amount of time, and you can play with that, make them feel uncomfortable or question things. They can’t just walk away or look at something else. There’s more commitment from the viewer, but that also gives me more responsibility."

So the viewer needs to be guided (a clear story is needed here, as well as robust visualization of the characters' intentions); at the same time, the audience cannot be manipulated ("the viewer shouldn't have the feeling I'm holding their hand").

‘Melk’: Music & Sound

This was a new experience for the Belgian visual artist and animation director, who was also helped in music and sound design by Nicolas Snyder. The film's overlapping themes (between horror, comedy and drama) prompted a lot of searching into the musical cues to be used -but it all worked out to the eerie atmosphere of the whole. And so did the shrieking voices (the film has no dialogue); Nicolas Snyder helped transform what was initially thought to be digital sounds into analogically produced unique voices (including flute/wind instrument for the mother's voice ("it gave her voice a raspy, fragile quality")

Some film scenes, like the fish's fate (no big spoilers here) and the unpredictable scale of the events it causes ("a precursor to the evil that will come"), were conceived from the start but were processed as the production flow of the whole film developed. "The warning that the fish creates is fun and unexpected," Anthonissen adds, "but it also plays with the fiction of it all, adding a layer of self-awareness."

Surrealism and Next Animation Steps

'Melk' is on the verge between reality and surrealism, and symbols are present there. The development and production process gradually aligned more closely with realism, taking into account the specific storytelling's necessities. But Anthonissen promises more surrealist experimentation in the future.

In the meantime, the Locarno world premiere of the film coincided with its first festival selection ("a bit overwhelming, but in a good way"). The film is fresh to discover and will be talked about.

'Melk' had its world premiere in Locarno's Concorso Internazionale Pardi di Domani and will make its North American premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival (September 10 to 20) in the Short Cuts, Strange Cuts programme.

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