To tell an empathetic story with characters that barely move sounds nearly impossible, right? Yet five students manage to do exactly that in Forever, building an entire emotional and comedic world around a group of garden gnomes whose rigid ceramic faces and bodies somehow carry more determination, will, pride, and stubborn heroism than many human protagonists.

Directed by Théo Djekou, Pierre Ferrari, Cyrine Jouini, Pauline Philippart and Anissa Terrier from École des Nouvelles Images, this six-minute short transforms the quiet backyard life of kitschy statuettes into a full-blown cinematic adventure. Here, the simple act of losing golf balls over a garden fence becomes an existential threat to a fragile society that refuses to accept its destiny as merely decorative. The premise is wonderfully absurd but treated with complete sincerity, as if the fate of these small figures truly hinged on defending their territory against an invisible, unreachable enemy.

With each gnome defined through posture, staging, and timing, their typically static forms become a surprisingly expressive cast. Their rigidity is both the joke and the charm, as their quest for revenge gradually evolves into something closer to a miniature epic. What unfolds is essentially a silent comedy driven by determination and an abundance of cultural references, where the language of Hollywood blockbusters is affectionately exaggerated and distilled into compact visual sketches – without ever feeling obvious or overplayed.

Dramatic framing, heightened tension, excellent sound design, and heroic poses elevate the gnomes’ struggle into something that feels both ridiculous and oddly sincere: a parody rooted in affection, with a singular goal – to defeat their ominous enemy. This antagonist remains unseen; we witness only the consequences of their actions. The true culprits – the humans behind it all, whose careless golfing disrupts the gnomes’ world – remain just out of sight.

The gnomes prepare for confrontation, organizing themselves as if facing an invading army. And yet, the only visible adversary they encounter is something far less sinister: a dog wandering through the battlefield, blissfully unaware of the war unfolding beneath its paws. It’s a small but perfect choice. The dog is neither evil nor malicious – it’s simply behaving like a dog – and by leaving it exactly as it is, the film preserves the innocence of its world while gently reminding us that the epic struggles we imagine are often invisible to everyone else.

Forever is a playful tribute to the blockbusters of our youth and a testament to the power of animation. In a world obsessed with constant motion, these characters stand victorious without shifting a muscle, telling – through the humblest of figures – a story about courage, rivalry, and heroic determination. It’s absurd, yet strikingly precise, proving that with enough imagination, even the quietest objects in a garden can carry the weight of an epic.

There is something about the locker – or changing – room that consistently proves fertile ground for storytelling. Perhaps it is a space defined by vulnerability, both physical and psychological, where social dynamics are heightened and identities are negotiated. In Ce qui appartient à César (English title: Changing Rooms), the César-nominated short by Violette Gitton, this environment becomes both a site where toxic masculinity festers and a space in which its young protagonist begins to process his emotions and mature.

Changing Rooms immediately immerses the viewer in its world, opening within the charged atmosphere of a fencing class. Our first clear encounter with 12-year-old César, the film’s lead character, sees him strutting towards the camera wearing only trousers and a chest protector designed for female fencers. As one of the boys is encouraged to “strip off,” César introduces the so-called “dick-o-meter,” a ruler used to measure the body part referenced in the device’s name, signalling early on the film’s engagement with performative masculinity and peer pressure.

Billie Blain (L) and Marius Plard stars as siblings in Changing Rooms

While this burgeoning toxic masculinity dominates the film’s opening moments and helps establish César’s social environment, Gitton soon shifts tone. A more vulnerable version of the boy is soon revealed as he addresses a video camera, marking a pivotal transition. From this point – particularly following the disclosure of his sister’s assault – the film develops into a layered exploration of adolescence, responsibility, and emotional confusion.

Gitton has stated that she hoped the film would interrogate “the way boys are confronted with violence and expectations about masculinity,” and this intention is clearly reflected in her narrative approach. By presenting the story through César’s perspective, she avoids depicting the assault itself, instead focusing on the internal turmoil of a young boy grappling with how to respond. This choice not only lends the film a distinctive perspective but arguably results in a more resonant and considered portrayal than a more direct representation might have achieved.

“I could see that something intense and confusing was happening inside him”

As is often the case with stories of this nature, the film is, unfortunately, rooted in personal experience. “I was sexually assaulted when I was 14, and I was struck by the reaction of my younger brother,” Gitton explains. “I could see that something intense and confusing was happening inside him.” Reflecting on later conversations, she notes that he described it as “strange” to grow up as a boy while also recognising that “men (like he was) could also represent a threat.”

Despite this traumatic event behind the film’s conception, Changing Rooms ultimately adopts a constructive and forward-looking perspective. Gitton emphasises that her intention was not to recreate the trauma itself, but to tell a story “that could feel useful for today’s younger generations,” adding that she wanted to “create something that young people could recognize themselves in, without simplifying their emotions or their contradictions.” An intention that’s especially significant in the context of adolescence, offering a nuanced reflection on the complex and often conflicting emotions young people must navigate as they grow.

Margarethe 89 was a bolt out of the blue during the 2023 festival season. Its mature spy-thriller plot line and grounded, historical realism felt like a novel pairing for a stylish, adult-focused animation, making the film an instant splash at spots like Director’s Fortnight, Annecy, and Curtas Vila do Conde. Animation is often pigeon-holed as a medium for the fantastic—a way to represent the unreal via strange worlds and creatures or represent interiority through dreams and visions, but Margarethe 89 instead utilizes the control inherent in animation to recreate for viewers the stifling surveillance state of the East German Stasi, to wonderfully paranoid and claustrophobic effect.

Directed by Lucas Malbrun, based on a script co-written with his frequent collaborator, Marie Larrivé, the filmmaker was born in Munich in 1990, and grew up in a reunited Germany where “strange revelations about this vanished country were omnipresent.” Inspired by the regime’s tactic of “Zersetzung” or “dissolution,” he sought to transpose the story of Gretchen from Goethe’s Faust to a new context. In an interview with Vimeo Staff Picks for the short’s online premiere, he notes that, “Gretchen’s love for Faust is based on a misunderstanding: he comes across as a young and righteous man, but is in fact an old man in pact with the devil…exploring the figure of the manipulative male, himself under the influence of third party…was compelling to me.”

Heinrich is that manipulative male, but Malbrun sees him as a victim of the regime, too. The film intriguingly begins on a surreal note with a parade where, instead of figures from pop culture – Snoopy, or Mickey, and the like – Heinrich witnesses a giant floating bust of Karl Marx. Malbrun is emphasizing the totalizing nature of ideology and how indoctrination begins very young. The film’s visual look reinforces this concept of arrested development, deploying bright colors in the images, added to the film by the use of normal, school-standard felt-tip pens.

Revolution is currently in the air in our media, as the best TV show of recent memory served as an epic chronicle of a nascent resistance movement, while the recently crowned Best Picture winner is about what we build once revolutionary fires burn out. The tragedy of Margarethe 89 is a nice complement to this moment, and shows how animation can be a strength within mainstream genres and storytelling modes. I’ve often noted that period pieces, despite their popularity in features and television, are tough for short films to execute. Margarethe 89, which evokes the popular German series Deutschland 83 via its title, feeds audience appetites for this sort of mainstream genre, with the level of sophistication and style they are accustomed to. It’s another big swing for the French production company, Eddy, which, via pieces like this, Larrivé and Malbrun’s prior film Noir-Soleil, or 2018 S/W selection, Le Mans 1955, is leading the way in showing how animation can tackle genres associated with live-action in sober, but artistically progressive fashion.