Nov 30, 2022

Two boys get into the game in Ageros Papantoniou's hilarious short story "Shitty City 4".

Comedy is all about timing, and you'd be hard pressed to find an animated short that uses 60 seconds as well as Ageros Papantoniou's "Shitty Town 4."

Short, simple, and perfectly executed, it repeats just one joke over and over again in its short running time.

Fans of wordplay will laugh merrily at the frustrations of the film's two young protagonists. The anguished expressions on the boys' faces, along with their sighs and the piles of cabs that land on the roof and fill the yard, highlight the absurdity of the situation. The camera work, too, slowly pans back from the frustrated boys, crackling for about the three millionth time, with a lonely, existential dread.

The short was produced by Melbourne, Australia-based Gibbon Animation, directed and animated by Papantoniou, with assistance from Nikhil Markare and Bonnie Chen. The simple but important sound design was done by Michael Dockery, and Toby Garrow voiced the film's brief dialogue.