Jun 1, 2022

An exclusive screening of the trailer for Tal Kantor's "Letters to a Pig," prior to its screening in Annecy Competition.

Tal Kantor, director of In Other Words, has released his new short film "Letter to a Pig," which will be screened in competition at the Annecy Film Festival later this month.

Producer and distributor Miyu has given Cartoon Brew an exclusive look at the trailer for the film.

The official synopsis for "Letter to a Pig" is as follows:

A Holocaust survivor reads a letter she wrote to the pig that saved her life. Alma, a young female student, hears his testimony in class and sinks into a dark journey within. There, she faces issues of identity as the boundaries between the extremes of animal and human nature blur.

Prior to the screening in Annecy, Cantor explained to Cartoon Brew the mixing style he used to create this short film, saying, "In this film, I continued to develop the techniques I used in my previous film, In Other Words. It was a combination of hand-drawn animation and live-action mixed-media footage, and this time I added another layer to that, an animation drawn with acrylic paint on paper. With the hand-drawn animation, I wanted to bring out the messiness and raw emotion from the material, as well as the weight brought about by the blackened stains."

The weight and messiness is more than just aesthetic.

"The images are fragmented and 'incomplete' because the film is about memory and how we perceive memory.

"Some aspects seem more real and concrete, while others are more fluid and elusive.

The trailer gives a taste of those fragmented visuals. Gradually, the grounded, realistic classroom gives way to a decades-old, ghostly haunted forest and a black barn of almost impossible size.

"As the film evolved and became deeper, we tried to make the material a little wilder and the imagery more flexible and elastic, like what can often happen in the subconscious," Cantor elaborated.

Animation for "Letter to a Pig" was created by Cantor, Meton Joffery, and Ann Crane, with backgrounds by Cantor and Dafi Ben Ami. Special effects were done by Shahar Kantor and Shahar Davis, the latter also responsible for compositing. Efrat Berger edited the film and Arbel Lom was the director of photography.

The film was produced and distributed by Mille and co-produced by Hive Studios. The film was supported by CNC and Arte France.