02/07/2025 - Kristina Dufková’s animated hit subverts expectations while trodding a familiar narrative path and, in the process, deals with obesity as a cinematic theme in a fresh and healthy way

Let’s get straight to it – teenage obesity. It’s a startlingly common and serious issue that many all around the world struggle with. Despite this being a mainstay societal problem for a long time now, depictions of it in popular and even some critically acclaimed films have often proven severely lacking, inadequate or downright problematic. Examples include broad comedies turning obesity into a punchline, as in The Nutty Professor, to grim films presenting the struggle with weight loss as hellish and depressing, as in Darren Aronofsky’s The Whale. But there are also films that manage to handle this topic responsibly and playfully, and Czech director Kristina Dufková’s animated hit Living Large [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Kristina Dufková
film profile], which screened in the Grand Competition - Feature Film at the 2025 Animafest Zagreb strikes this balance with incredible confidence and ease, subtly making use of the power of its medium.

In this lighthearted stop-animation coming-of-age comedy, Dufková paints a complex and vivid portrait of a teenager embattled not only by obesity, but also by high school love. The protagonist, Benjamin Pipetka, defies stereotypical representations. He serves as neither a punchline nor a warning to the viewer, but is – even before his weight is introduced as a problem – presented as a fully-fledged character with an enviable cool factor. He is a chef-in-the-making who delights in cooking for his friends and family, and a songwriter who sings and raps his way through life. He is also a quippy smartmouth who doesn’t take himself too seriously – until he falls head over heels for his new classmate Claire and is simultaneously confronted by his doctor about his recent weight gain. Yikes, tragic timing. But Ben faces it head on, going on a strict diet and enduring high-school bullies and plates of vegetables with equal tenacity and wit.

It is hard to over-emphasise how effective this simple story structure is at conveying the topic of obesity without making it look trite. It feels like the film should be nothing more than a simple mix of two well-trodden themes – a love story and a weight-loss struggle – but in reality the two arcs constantly subvert and play off each other, creating a complex whole. While most filmic representations of obesity suffer precisely from narrow-mindedly focusing on this one issue, Living Large confidently depicts Ben’s fight with obesity as just a piece, central as it may be here, of the mosaic that is teenage life.

An equally crucial part of the film’s aptitude in conveying its inspiring message can be found in its aesthetics, namely in its subtle deconstruction of the concept of beauty. Stop-motion puppet-animated films are traditionally known for playing with conventional aesthetics, often embracing an aesthetics of the ugly – just think of the famous character designs of Jan Švankmajer, Tim Burton or Henry Selick. The characters of Living Large are clearly influenced by this tradition, exhibiting a liberation from not only the standards of beauty but from the expectations of appearance in general. None of the characters look pretty in a conventional way; however, they do not look like teenagers either. Their age is as indefinable as their looks, and in this way the film precludes us from making assumptions about the characters based on their bodies and faces. Even Claire, Ben’s love interest, is never visually presented to us as beautiful, with her long face and bags under the eyes. Thus, the visual design distances us from the characters, while the narrative is at the same time so potent that it constantly reels us back in and makes us reevaluate their beauty. Suddenly, we find ourselves thinking Ben and all his friends are charming and beautiful, despite on a purely visual level, them not really looking the part.

Living Large deals with representing Ben’s obesity in a similar way. Because the proportions and looks of the characters are so de-naturalised, Ben never comes across as obese. Sure, he looks round and slouches, but it takes a medical appointment to really let us know that he is overweight to an unhealthy degree. With this, the film manages to cleanse obesity of its negative visual markers and cultural connotations, making it into a purely factual health problem. This lets the viewer process visually that beauty really does stem from personality and shapes the way we see the outside world. Ben’s obesity therefore reveals itself as a strictly non-visual issue, creating a potent contrast to how we usually perceive obesity. People mostly want to lose weight to look better, but we want Ben to lose it regardless of what he looks like. And that, by itself, is an achievement of storytelling complexity, especially in a humble coming-of-age tale like this.

Living Large is a production by Barletta (Czech Republic) in co-production with Novinski (Slovakia) and Novanima Productions (France). Gebeka International is managing international sales.