27/08/2024 - The programme consisted of recent animated shorts by female and female-identifying artists from Central and Eastern Europe, put together by the AFN curators

One of the most delightful film blocks at Fest Anča this year was the curated programme “That’s What She Said”, which brought together nine excellent animated shorts by female filmmakers from the most recent editions of the Animation Festival Network (AFN) member festivals: Animateka, Animest, Fest Anča, Animafest and Anifilm. In doing so, the programmers of the AFN extended a gesture of support for emerging female voices, underscoring the importance of visibility and representation in the industry.

The selected shorts from Hungary, Ukraine, France, Germany, Czechia, Poland, Croatia, France, Serbia and Latvia explore the human condition through humorous, happy and dark moments. With distinctive candour and ardour, the following six titles plunge into the realms of the personal and the political as well as the individual and the collective.

Martina Meštrović’s Croatian short Her Dress for the Final explores a personal type of pain, depicting a day in the life of an old woman - Meštrović’s grandmother in fact - who dyed her white wedding dress black to be buried in it. The wedding dress is a potent metaphor for long-gone youth, but there is nothing morbid about the short. On the contrary, it feels light and empowering. The director does not shy away from showing the old woman’s body and its bodily functions - she pees, washes herself, combs her hair and puts on a bra. This latter scene humorously shows her sagging breasts bouncing up with the bra on, only to fall down the next minute. By turning the white dress into a funeral dress, Meštrović’s grandmother affirms her agency to make unexpected decisions.

Rising Above is another tale of female empowerment. Directed by Czech animator Natálie Durchánková, this documentary short is based on the real-life testimony provided by a survivor of a brutal sexual assault. The short oscillates between foregrounding the act of rape and the young woman’s internal experience of it. Her subjectivity is represented as a mirror that shatters as the man attacks her and, as a final blow, stabs her with a knife, leaving two long wounds that mark her chest in the shape of a cross. Using shades of blue to highlight a sense of depression and trauma that the victim is left with, Durchánková transforms the colour of suffering and pain into one of freedom and acceptance. Once the woman comes to terms with that disturbing event, the shattered mirror is put back together with the visible cracks in place, similar to Kintsugi, the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with gold. And just like fixed broken pottery, the young woman is now stronger and more radiant.

Two shorts in the selection deal with detached couples. While Hungarian title Above the Clouds, directed by Vivien Hárshegyi, follows a young woman who is afraid to fall in love, the Polish-Latvian short Misaligned by Marta Magnuska is, as the title suggests, about a young couple who are drifting apart.

In Above the Clouds, Hárshegyi goes for an exuberant visual style, as vibrant colours and soppy romantic songs of love and heartbreak utilise the familiar trope of the girl-meets-boy scenario. A young woman with distinctive pink hair goes on a date with a young man, only to chicken out when the man is about to confess his feelings for her. Rushing memories of her past heartbreak dominate most of the screen time, with the protagonist reliving the drama and trauma of her previous relationship.

Magnuska’s Misaligned resorts to a more minimalistic visual language, using a monochrome palette and focusing only on the characters and the objects they manipulate, leaving the rest to our imaginations. Punctuated by rhythmic diegetic sounds, like the buzzing of a fly or the grinding sounds of a coffee machine, the short creates an almost claustrophobic environment in which the woman and the man lead separate lives. Gradually they find themselves more connected to a gecko sitting in a terrarium and a fly circling around a lamp. Just like these creatures, the unnamed woman and man circle around each other but do not fully connect.

Moving from the individual to the collective, two shorts explore the life of a family and the turbulent life of a nation. Lea Vidaković’s The Family Portrait, a Croatian-French-Serbian co-production, focuses on the everyday life of a large family before the fall of the Austro-Hungarian empire. This visually stunning work offers a glimpse into the lives of three generations, as those coming from rural areas invade the bourgeois house of the evidently urban part of the family. The plot is rather loose, capturing more the mood of the historical period, while the skilfully crafted details and miniatures add to the sumptuous atmosphere of the end of an era.

The Ukrainian-German co-production Mariupol. A Hundred Nights deals with a conflict that took place a hundred years later, showing a different kind of atmosphere - that of despair and destruction. Director Sofiia Melnyk recreates the night of 24 February 2022, when people woke up to the sounds of air raid sirens and tanks hitting the road. Painted in the colours of the Ukrainian flag, yellow and blue, as well as the colours of night and blood, black and red, the documentary short focuses on a little girl as she tries to find someone alive in the burned-down city. The aftermath of the Russian invasion is seen in empty playgrounds and empty swings, deserted streets and destroyed apartment blocks. “The wheels, they hit the road, like a ferry hits a wave”, a female voice sings. In fact, the song - replete with metaphors of war - assumes the narration, making Melnik’s story all the more heart-wrenching.

Taken as a whole, this collection of women-directed short films not only pushes the boundaries of animated storytelling, but also dares to explore personal and collective grief, as well as the hum of everyday life and its vicissitudes.