Phoebe Jane Hart’s charming stop-motion short Bug Diner was the Winner of the Top Short Jury Award for Animation at this year’s just-wrapped Sundance Festival. The seven-minute-long crowd-pleaser is Hart’s CalArts thesis project. The dark comedy’s official synopsis reads “dissatisfied marriage, a secret crush, and workplace fantasies come to a head in a diner run by a mole with a hot ass.”
The Sundance Festival’s short film jury said in a statement, “We didn’t stop laughing at this from start to finish. It has that magical effect of making you walk around all day with a smile on your face. The dialogue was incredibly written and the animation style was amazing… there’s also never been a better bug’s voice done on film!”
Watch the trailer below:
Meanwhile, at the Slamdance Festival (Jan. 19-28), Kohana Wilson’s Edith and the Tall Child took home the Animated Shorts Grand Jury Prize. Honorable Mention went to Xinhe Zhao’s colorful, experimental project, Lil Sherbet. Wilson’s short is a hand-drawn film about a non-binary “tall child’s experiences with gender dysphoria, trans memory and hair. They uncomfortably cohabitate with an extinct ground sloth named Edith: an imagined creature representative of the character’s self before accepting their trans-ness.”
The jury stated, “The award-winning animation shorts are two films that we believe elevate the craft of hand-drawn storytelling and invite the audience into windows of personal artistic expression.”
Bill Plympton’s Slide also received an Honorable Mention by the jury in the Breakout Feature category. The indie animator’s eighth feature film is described as a 1940s-era musical comedy Western, set in a corrupt logging town where a mysterious guitar player appears to battle the evil mayor and his equally selfish twin brother, with the aid of a giant Hellbug.
