3. World Of Tomorrow
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdV1uFwtCpo Written and directed by short movie veteran and iconoclast
Don Hertzfeldt (hes brought twelve idiosyncratic little gems to bizarre life in the last twenty years), the fifteen-minute long animation World Of Tomorrow has been feted as the best film of this years Sundance Festival. Not best animated film, not best short: best film, with reviewers convinced from very early on that no other films at the festival were likely to top it. In fact, several critics have gone one better and declared it the best film of 2015 anywhere. Its about a very little girl called Emily, taken on a tour of her future by her clone Emily for a surreal, engaging, occasionally heartbreaking and usually hilarious trip into a deteriorating, Xeroxed future. Hertzfeldts animation style is deceptively amateurish the stick figures representing people may be awkward and simple, but they convey a surprising amount of emotion, and the backgrounds and effects surrounding them are as sophisticated as the characters are childlike. Clone Emily is clearly undergoing a form of existential crisis, but Toddler Emily is almost entirely oblivious, chirpily carrying on regardless, responding to weighty questions with cheerful non-sequiturs. The film is like this throughout: a constant balancing act between the weighty and the carefree, juxtaposing Clone Emilys future life of sad isolation and corroded memories with Toddler Emilys happy-go-lucky innocence, and its a wonderful experience.