Zima by Tomasz Popakul & Kasumi Ozeki
This is the fourth animation short by acclaimed Polish director Tomasz (Tomek) Popakul ('Ziegonort', 'Black', 'Acid Rain'), co-directed by Kasumi Ozeki. The 26-minute animation short tells the story of a community in the snow.
Mosaic portrait of a small fisherman's village where human to human, human to animal, animal to animal interdepend on a delicate balance of warm tender care and cold emotional cruelty. An eerie story of loneliness and community narrated with magical realism.
The film won the Best Narrative Short at the Ottawa International Animation Festival 2023.
'Zima' Review (Mikhail Gurevich):
‘Zima’ (‘Winter’, dir. Tomek Popakul, Kasumi Ozeki; Poland) is recognized as the Best Narrative short for both “its striking narrative and artistic vision”. Well, to me, together with the previously acclaimed ‘Acid Rain’, these are pieces of hard-boiled storytelling, even if not exactly easy-going ones: from road-rave-acid trip to gloomy earthy-village-rough-life tale-parabola; but in both cases, I believe, that’s more the ‘vision’, the design choices from era-shifting psychedelics to cleaned-up severe graphics with arguably art-deco touch – that would decisively set the framework and tone, and thus gives the story its semantic train, this time stylishly justifying almost folkloric extremes and twists in the tangle of beastly and human passions and fates
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