Feb 27, 2024

Eva Darabos' By Little Block! is a surreal farewell to the apartment complex where she grew up.

Éva Darabos' charming 2020 student film, Bye Little Block! is now available on her Vimeo channel and was selected as a Vimeo Staff Pick.

This 2D short film blends grounded, recognizable sets and characters with abstract shapes and impossible movements to tell the story of a young woman who receives the unwelcome news that she will soon have to move out of her apartment. As tears spill down her grief-stricken face and hit the ground, the film plunges into a surreal panorama of the apartment complex and its inhabitants.

In an interview with Cartoon Brew, Darabos explained the inspiration behind this short film: “The film is about a woman who is in the middle of a family in the middle of nowhere. The quirky atmosphere and characters of this typically Central/Eastern European region have always inspired me.

Despite its melancholic setting, the film's playful animation and colors do not allow the viewer to become too depressed. There is too much going on for the protagonist to dwell on the bad news, and by the end, she seems to have accepted her impending relocation situation.

Darabos is an animator who graduated from Hungary's prestigious Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design (MOME), where as part of her master's degree in animation, she produced “By Little Block! [...] [...] [...]