This year’s Tribeca Festival had one of the best animated short film lineups I’ve seen in a long time, which makes it all the more unfortunate that this year’s lineup is also the most controversial. For the first time in the history of the festival, the animated shorts competition is including multiple films with generative AI, either partially and with a sizable animation crew, or generated almost wholesale. AI has already been spotlighted in the festival for the last few years, and in fact, there’s an entire AI-generated feature in the festival this year. However, that and the other AI screenings they’ve done were usually separate from the main festival competition. Now, animated shorts have to compete with automated works. Like last year, there were enough shorts in competition that two screenings had to be held, one for kids and one for adults, with two other shorts being featured in the festival’s Dark Web shorts program.
If including shorts with AI in the competition, generative or otherwise, was controversial, the films that they were up against will only reinforce those against their decision. Tribeca animated shorts can be varied in terms of quality depending on the year, and in this case, the four shorts using AI (ROAR, ChikaBOOM!, Dear Upstairs Neighbors, and Leg Day) were definitely the weakest of the bunch. (This isn’t a matter of bias, either. If they hadn’t used AI, I’d still think this. Another short, Grounded, didn’t use AI but I’d also say it was on the low end as well.) Yet the rest of the shorts I saw were almost entirely of such exponentially higher quality that it seemed to prove why having AI shorts compete in the first place was such an insult. Whether taking full advantage of the animated medium or presenting bold, powerful storytelling in a way only animation can provide, I was extremely impressed with a lot of the selection this year.
One filmmaker in particular opened his short, which he made mostly by himself, with the disclaimer that no AI was used, and it was certainly one of the standouts in my eyes. Under the Lake is a CGI short that presents a premise straight out of a Coen Brothers movie: a father lives a happy life with his son, hoping the boy never learns too much about what’s in those large burlap sacks he keeps dumping into the lake. One day, the son finds an injured man crawling out of the lake, and against the father’s wishes, he is invited to spend the night at the house, creating a powder keg that leads to a brutal, karmic conclusion. The catch, however, is that every single character in this movie is a metal stick figure. No faces, no dialogue. All the story and emotional weight is conveyed through visuals and simple body language, and the result is shockingly effective in its intensity. It’s the kind of animated curiosity I love to discover.
The short Eeny, Meeny, Miny, Moe! examines the experience of being different through a Euro-mythological lens. In the heavens, young gods and monsters play together on the playground. The sun god Helios drops his son Yios off, but the young godlet’s rays annoy his brethren. During a childhood game of Eeny, Meeny, Miny, Moe, a gorgon girl decides to play a cruel prank on the young god, but things go horribly wrong as he finds himself plummeting down to Earth. However, what he finds there might be exactly what he needs. As someone neurodivergent, I could absolutely relate to this short, and my fascination with mythology made me love it even more. The film employs a cute art style inspired by Ancient Greek pottery, and I absolutely loved the creature designs in this. It also won the jury over enough to be given a special mention during the awards ceremony.
Saba was an absolutely beautiful short with one of the most intriguing settings of the bunch. In a world with inverted gravity, a boy and his grandpa live in a house, fishing in the water above and trying not to float too high. As time passes, though, the inevitable happens, and the boy is now left alone…until he gets a hint that his “saba” might still be out there somewhere. It’s an incredible metaphor of our finite time on this earth with great animation, and if you’ve lost a grandparent, this is gonna bring out the waterworks.
Violet and Marlowe Rob a Bank is a three-minute short that serves as a music video for “Feel It All Again” by Adore, but what a three minutes it is. In what is essentially the plot of an entire action movie in miniature, a rabbit couple decides to rob the carrot factories of the evil President Rabbit, who has monopolized the rabbits’ entire food supply through heavy industry. The result is essentially Robin Hood by way of John Wick, and the amount of story in such a short period of time is astounding. Rendered in simple and adorable CGI, the film nevertheless emulates the kinetically-shot action sequences of recent Hollywood blockbusters (even fitting in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it shout out to Wanted), and has a distinct three-act structure with an emotional climax, all of which fits perfectly to the song. Despite its extremely brief length and being up against many other works with heavier themes, Violet and Marlowe ended up beating the odds to take home the award for Best Animated Short, qualifying it for the Oscars.
Stay tuned for the second part of my report, featuring a twisted animation legend making his most unexpectedly beautiful work to date, and the best animated short film I’ve seen so far this year (that wasn’t even in the competition).
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