Shorts

'Like Friend, Like Deer' by Malek Eghbali (2025): Film Review - Animafest Zagreb

Vassilis Kroustallis 06 June 2025

Life Friend, Like Deer by Malek Eghbal animation still

In Albert Camus' short story 'The Guest' (1957), a school teacher has to hand over an Arab prisoner (and an acquaintance of his) to the Algerian prison -but personal friendship intervenes. Based on this premise, the 2D/3D animation short 'Like Friend, Like Deer' by Iranian animation filmmaker Malek Eghbali (presented at the Animafest Zagreb Grand Short Competition) presents a black-and-white layered meditation on friendship, guilt and duty.

Devoted to the 'Iranian environmentalists in prison', the film opens with the body of a policeman at the center of the mountainous village -and an antler nearby. Soon enough, we see a policeman carrying over the suspect, a man with a deer head, to the school teacher. The latter has to hand over the suspect to the authorities, even though the former person enjoyed a very warm and friendly relationship with the teacher and the school kids back in the past. While the teacher initially refuses, he has no other option but to accept the mission, with the deer man's hand tied in tight.

Without revealing the ending of the 13-minute film, it suffices to say that it turns the moral premise of friendship vs. duty into a most cosmic, environmental event. Even though it never veers away from realism, it makes the overall environment a place to behold. Wide shots of an uneasy nature, wild animals with a single patch of red color in a black-and-white film, and bird's eye view shots that move from a mountain to prison. And, most of all, a constantly molding (but not shaky) texture of the characters and the backgrounds, like clay elements that need to be reshaped with every movement -and make the final decision for both characters a matter of urgency.

'Like Friend, Like Deer' presents more than a protest against persecution or a cry for an environment maltreated by our fellow humans. It reads mostly as a back-to-basics world of moral virtues and individual decisions, untainted by the world of fake news and propaganda. It reveals a need for a solid commitment and it artfully crafts a world in which human agency is still important and multifaceted.

Want to read more free articles like this?