8 Bullets by Frank Ternier

 Having premiered at Cannes Directors' Fortnight, '8 Bullets' (8 Balles) by Frank Ternier (@idealcrash.fr) builds a post-apocalyptic world out of an extremely dramatic story.

Gabriel, a man in his thirties, is immersed in his memories: his daughter was shot in the leg, and his wife died after a hostage situation. He is now a prisoner of painful memories that lead him astray.

Ternier does not consider himself an animation director, but rather a director of the moving image, which combines different materials to serve his creative purpose.

This certainly shows in the 13-minute short, which uses split-screen environments, a modernist use of narrator sounds and voices inside your head and a fragmented (but very well-constructed) background environment, which only points to one word: trauma. The revenge act here is given between non-linear but legible flashbacks, and a bit of surrealism ensues with a swimming fish representing the Evil.

Food (as in his earlier short, Le Di@ble en bouche) is here the sign of something else going awry, and only rotoscope is entitled to show the "actual" past crime. Reality is here relegated to a black-and-white fluid representation.

Without being overtly experimental in theme, 8 Bullets makes its traumatic story a well-arranged and always fresh pictorial experiment on human loss and guilt. It is experiential at its best.

Watch 8 Bullets

CREDITS:
Production : L'image d'après, Maud Martin, Annabelle Gangneux
Script-Direction : Frank Ternier
Designs : Shihhan Shaw
Animation : Laurent Moulin, Xavier Rubel, Frank Ternier, Shihhan Shaw
3D Modelling and animation : Laurent Moulin
Compositing : Frank Ternier
Music : Frédéric Duzan
Voice: Camille Trophème, Laurent Seron, Stéphane Gasc