Bloomstreet 11

I've never been a young girl going through puberty, but this short film makes it very easy to understanding the care-free stage of life, and how it changes. It focuses on the friendship aspect, where one girl goes ahead of the other, essentially breaking the dynamic of the relationship. It does this in a very nicely contained way, that offers no dialogue but yet everything is clear. It feels odd to praise the 'writing' of a dialogue free film - but in a way it is more impressive to do it without having the words to explain.

Even if the narrative failed (which it doesn't), this would still be a film worth seeing because of the talent and invention in the animation. It mixes traditional 'drawing' animation with stop-motion animation. As I was watching it I assumed that at least some of it must have been done inside a computer or something (worth noting my toddler is a better animator than me) because it moves so well, the characters cast a shadow, and many other effects - plus fundamentally, the characters look hand-drawn, while the house is very much a physical model. Watching the 'making of' I learnt that the characters are drawn, then printed onto plastic, then that plastic is hand-painted. Those plastic figures are sequenced, so they can be used within the stop-motion, even though they look totally different from it. Very impressive, and even more-so because the writing is just as strong.