Dec 5, 2023

2024 Oscar Nominees for Best Short Film: "Sunflower Field" Director Polina Buchak and Animator Mulan Hu.

Welcome to Cartoon Brew's spotlight series highlighting animated short films that have qualified for the 2024 Academy Awards. There are several ways for a film to qualify for an award. In this edition, we will focus on films that have won an Oscar-eligible award at a festival that is eligible for the Academy Awards.

Today's short film is "Sunflower Field" by director Polina Buchak and animator Mulan Hu. The film won Best Animated Short at the Woodstock Film Festival and qualified for an Academy Award.

As war rages in Ukraine, a young girl waits for a phone call from her father. As time passes, the girl dozes through several dream worlds, trying to find her way home.

Polina Buchak: The idea for "Sunflower Field" came to me because of a nightmare. I was back at my parents' house in Kiev, and my family was talking about a hypothetical war, and I couldn't understand what they were talking about, because since 2014 Ukrainians have been defending their independence from Russian occupation. So the tension of "what if -" bled into our lives for nearly a decade, and in January 2022, my family and I had breakfast while my mother received a notice from our building about where residents could find the nearest bunker. At that moment, I was terrified. Because I did not understand how to explain and protect my children from this fear, even though they are much more emotionally attuned to the world than we give them credit for.

When I was still in Ukraine, we all tended to get together with friends and try to figure things out. I observed my friends' children and their interactions with their parents, and after February 24 I had to adjust my script from a "what if" story to one that reflected the reality of Ukraine during a full-scale invasion. Since then, I have worked with various non-profit organizations and spoken with professionals involved in child therapy, listening to their expertise and the stories of children with difficult cases. While we are fighting for an independent future for Ukrainians, we are witnessing another generation being traumatized. Witnessing the destruction of the place I grew up in also evoked feelings that come from my inner child. So with all of these fragments, I put together a story of a little hero who, despite the odds, still finds his way home.

What is it about this story or concept that captured your heart and inspired you to direct this film?

Buchak: I have always reacted to world affairs through my art. When my house is on fire, I cannot remain silent. One of the most painful things for me was when my 16-year-old cousin was forced to learn what war was before he graduated from high school. My inner fear drove me to write The Sunflower Field. It is exhausting to watch people talk about how much courage and resilience our children have taught us by sacrificing their childhoods for us. The fact that, to this day, children experience the violence that humans are capable of means that we still fail to protect them.

What did you learn through the experience of making this film, either in terms of production, filmmaking, creativity, or subject matter? Mulan Hu: This short film means a lot to both of us. We worked on this film in a remote location with a 12-hour time difference, amidst the chaos of a pandemic and war. What was happening around us in two very different parts of the globe motivated us to capture a part of the world at that time through this short film. Although we come from very different cultures, working together on this short film allowed us to see how a creative medium like animation can evoke an emotional universality. In terms of filmmaking, Polina has a background in live action and I brought aspects of animation to her vision. For both of us, it was a great learning experience to combine our skills and perspectives to bring one vision to life.

Buchak: Same with Mulan. We have known each other since the beginning of our studies in the film department at NYU. She has seen me write numerous scripts about what is happening in my hometown, and I am familiar with her animation style (dealing with dreamscapes and mysticism). So we were perfect partners for this film. [Buchak: We wanted to visually represent the progression of the nightmare and the way the characters flow from scene to scene. We start with smooth brushstrokes that show the girl's reality. As she begins to dream, the shapes become sharper and the coloring of objects more abrupt. The inclusion of embroidery was very important to us because we wanted to represent Ukraine both visually and aurally. The collaboration with Mulan's animation style brought universality to this look.

Huw: I am grateful that Polina approached me to collaborate on this short film with my visual style in mind as part of her vision. We structured our visual approach around my style of character design and animation. Since there are many important visual symbols in the story that contain cultural connotations (e.g., cross-stitch), we experimented with different textures to convey the symbols in the story, generated custom brushes, and applied textile patterns to help the visual narrative .