Oct 5, 2023

2024 Oscar Nominee for Best Short Film: "Letter To A Pig" by Tal Kantor

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 "Letter to a Pig" by Tal Kantor ("In Other Words"). The film won the Best International Short Film Award at the Anima-Brussels Animation Film Festival and qualified for an Academy Award.

"Letter to a Pig" blends animation techniques with live action shots to tell different versions of the same story. In this short film, a Holocaust survivor reads a letter to a pig that saved his life to a group of schoolchildren. The different styles emphasize how fallible human memory is and how abstract the images and imaginings recalled are often.

Cartoon Brew: When we last spoke with you, you mentioned that this work expands on the techniques you used in your previous work, In Other Words. Tal Kantor: This is a mixed-media technique: this is a mixed-media technique I developed that combines hand-drawn animation and video fragments. In this film, I added another important layer to the process and used traditional paint animation on paper. I believe that the materiality of paint on paper contains a great deal of expression and emotion. Since this film deals with memory and the subconscious, this technique allows us to mimic how our minds and memories work. In our memory, certain details can be retained in vivid and detailed form while other elements fade and disappear over time. This is why the film's visual language and characters appear fragmented and incomplete, giving the viewer a dynamic sense of the characters' perspectives. In this way, I was able to play with the reality that often appears in the detailed images and combine it with the elusive nature of memory and imagination through the free stain of animated lines and colors.

What was it about this story or concept that captured you and inspired you to direct this film? Letters to a Pig is based on an experience I had in elementary school, an encounter with a Holocaust survivor who spoke to my class on Memorial Day, and an unforgettable dream I had afterwards. That story and dream were so powerful that they remain with me even now, 10 years later. Every time I thought about it, it evoked deep questions about my identity and the complex baggage I and the younger generation unconsciously carry. This experience and questioning stayed with me for a long time and eventually became the impulse to make this film. I wanted to share this thought on the screen and ask, among other things: Can we learn and talk about past traumas without passing them on to future generations?"

Through the experience of making this film, what have you learned about the production, filmmaking, creative aspects, or the subject matter? What have you learned? I think the most important thing I learned is the value of working with a great team. This is a complex and unique film, and it would not have been possible without the dedicated team that came together from all over the world to make it, a team that brought their talents and creativity in full force to ensure that every layer of the process and vision was met in the best way possible. As difficult as it was, it was also one of the most important and special processes I have ever experienced in my life.

Tell us about how you developed the visual approach for this film and why you used this style/method. I wanted the film to echo the broken and damaged language of memory and emotion. I felt that this collage of hand-drawn lines, dry expressive color stains, images, and archival material was an appropriate visual language for the film's theme. To give life and movement to the various fragments of stories, emotions, and images we construct as a collective memory. This technique also allowed me to visually express the inner emotional world of the characters. When they felt love, when they felt anger, when they wanted to disappear, when they felt no one was listening, etc., they could express how they felt with a single delicate line or vibrating stain of color.