Games x Animation

Films in this screening:

Michael Frei:

Kids

Switzerland, 2019. 9 minutes.

An animated short exploring group dynamics. How do we define ourselves when we are all equal?

Total Refusal:

Hardly Working

Austria, 2022. 20 minutes.

Hardly Working sheds a limelight on the very characters that normally remain in the background of video games: NPCs. They are non-player characters that populate the digital world as extras to create the appearance of normality. A laundress, a stable boy, a street sweeper and a carpenter are observed with ethnographic precision. They are Sisyphus machines, whose labour routines, activity patterns as well as bugs and malfunctions paint a vivid analogy for work under capitalism.

Nikita Diakur:

Ugly

Germany, 2022. 21 minutes.

An ugly cat struggles to make friends in an evil neighbourhood, but finds a soulmate in a Native American chief who helps it on its journey to restore balance within the world.

Atsushi Wada:

My Exercise

Japan, 2020. 3 minutes.

A boy is doing exercises with his dog.

Pablo Ballarín:

In My Chest of Fire There Is Still Place to Temple Your Dagger

Spain, 2021. 24 minutes.

This is the story of a fighter and a trainer, and the strange relationship that they have.

Content warnings for this screening
Scene warning: animal abuse, gun violence