Dota

Among the garbage heaps of a big landfill on a Croatian island, Zoki uncovers a microcassette. A close study of the discarded object serves as a tribute to chance and imagination.

I was one of many. I was one of everyone. And many were me. Croation animator Petra Zlonoga, who charmed us with the wonderful Dota (LIFF 2017), has created another disarmingly elegant Animator. A soulful journey of self-discovery, with a graceful and elemental spirit of creation, her new film is a twinkling, cosmological study, teeming with life and delicacy.

A prehistoric fish takes its first step on dry land, a cuddling T-Rex couple is about to become extinct after a meteorite impact, while in Poland it is 1963 and the Winter of the Century is in full swing. Chimneys cheerfully spit out clouds of black smoke. A young coal loader is madly in love with a beautiful crane operator. The heat of his love will not let him freeze as he struggles with the piercing frost and trudges through snow drifts guided by wild desire. Our hero and heroine, still totally unaware of global warming and excessive carbon dioxide emissions, will play their parts in a human comedy of love and death.

It problematizes love relationships through the institution of marriage, asking the question of how to promise someone eternal love, if it is an emotional transformation day by day, as well as a relationship itself.