Nov 6, 2024

2025 Oscar Short Film Candidates: -Boat People - Directed by Tao Lam and Kel Boersma

Welcome to the spotlight series of Cartoon Brew, which focuses on the 2025 Academy Award-nominated animated shorts. Films in this series have been certified on one of several routes, including winning an Oscar at a film festival, exhibiting in a theater or winning a Student Academy Award.

Today's film is Boat People by Vietnamese-Canadian writer and illustrator Thao Lam and Canadian director Kjell Boersma. The short film, produced by the National Film Commission of Canada, won the Helen Hill Award for Animated Short at the New Orleans Film Festival and earned an Academy Award qualification.

A hybrid short that mixes 2d drawing animation, stop-motion multi-plane, and 3d rendering, Boat People tells the story of Itao and her parents' flight across the tumultuous seas of history, using Ali as a metaphor. It is based on Ram's own children's book, The Paper Boat: A Refugee Story, published in 2020.

Cartoon Brewing: Tao, in this short, you're doing your own narration. Tell us more about why you made this choice and how you woven this story together with your own voice in terms of sound design and music.

Taoram: I never imagined doing the narration for the boat People myself. Until I was able to cast a professional voice actor, I always thought I was just filling in. But as the film took shape, it became clear to everyone on the team (but me) that I should be the one who tells my own story.

Kjell Boersma: It seemed obvious to me that it should be narrated, so interesting. The story is so personal, and Itao has such a unique and distinctive voice, so I don't think the film will work without it. What we have come back through the whole process is texture. It seemed appropriate that textures were everywhere in the visual elements of the film, and soundscapes should also incorporate it. This meant finding a very simple and raw sound that helped give the visuals another layer of meaning. The tone of the film can be deliberately vague, so don't undercut it with a traditional score that dictates how it should feel to the viewer, because the film also covers a huge amount in a short time, so making every shot as concise as possible and even allowing the audience's room to breathe is a real balancing act. Score and sound design, I think, are working together to create these small air pockets.

What was forced to connect with you and direct a film about this story or concept-

Ram: A few years ago, my family was experiencing some difficulties in dealing with my divorce.And I began to study how others endured and overcame difficulties, how families picked up and started over again. I spent the summer interviewing my family about their escape from Vietnam just before Christmas in 1980. Many families have stories told and told. For a long time, all I knew about the war and escape from Vietnam was the story my mother told, the lessons of kindness and karma.

Long before the war, when the only invasion was of ants looking for food, her mother set up a bowl of sugar water to get rid of the pest house. As a child, my mother would spend a carefree afternoon fishing ants from these bowls. On the night of our escape, we got lost in tall reeds. Miraculously, by the light of the moon, my mother found traces of ants. Lost and desperate, she decided to follow them, which led us to the riverbank where our escape boat was waiting. Ali, whom she rescued as a little girl, saved her in return for the night. This story with ants and sugar water became the cornerstone of the boat People.

Boersma: This story of Thao's mother and Ali was what she first threw at me at our first meeting about the film. I was immediately hooked not only on the evocative image, but also on the idea that this story is something that has a metaphysical meaning in her life. I have always been drawn to stories that I have not seen drawn before, and animation is such a demanding process and it is your project when you have been working on a project for many years, you have to keep finding new things in it to get excited, and this project is very important.

What did you learn about production, filmmaking, creative, or subject matter through the experience of making this film-

Ram: This was my first venture into animation and filmmaking, so I had a lot to learn (and still do). Making this film also gave me a reason to dive into Vietnam's tumultuous history. In my research, I came across so many stories that were similar to mine. I felt connected not only to the country we left behind, but also to the communities that struggled but persisted and survived. More importantly, the film gave me an excuse and courage to talk to my parents about the Vietnam War and our journey across the South China Sea, and to ask difficult questions.

Boersma: I learned a lot at all stages of the process. In our study, we investigated the daily life in refugee camps in Southeast Asia and the countless experiences of people trying to reach them. There were stories of master bakers making baguettes in an oven made of cookie cans, and rat plague, pirates and sunken ships being turned away on the beach. There were so many materials that never made it to the film. We also delved deeper into the biology of ants, looking for examples that fit the story we wanted to talk about human-ant migration. Because the species of ants are so diverse that you can find a mirror for almost any human group behavior, we really learned a lot about the difficulty of reproducing Itao's illustration style, in Gan production for selection. It's seemingly simple, but to bring it to life has been tremendously difficult.

Can you explain how you developed a visual approach to cinema - why did you settle for this style/technique-

Ram: I write and explain children's books for life.This collage style seen in movies is based on the style/technique I use when making children's books. I have an insatiable love for color and texture papers.

Boersma: The most important part of the film for me is the idea that there were hundreds of thousands of unique individuals who made this dangerous journey and were deeply affected by it, but we tend to think of them as undifferentiated chunks. So to me it was very clear that the film needed to be as authentic to it's unique, individual visual style as possible. This meant that she would develop the process of creating each frame in a way similar to how she would create a panel for a book. To do this, we started with traditionally animated line art, allowing the freedom to create dynamic compositions and give the characters fluidity of movement and expression. From there, I initially tried laser cutting the paper to create layers for each frame, but the process was very time consuming and I felt the workflow was too rigid. Ultimately, we decided on a digital approach tailored to the process of stacking textured paper, but we were able to increase flexibility.