Annecy 2025 - Day 2
Settling in and watching some weird films
Recap
Welcome back to my Annecy Film Festival 2025 diary, this post is for Day 2 (Tuesday)! If you haven’t yet, you can catch up on the previous day’s highlights below:
Films on Day 2 (Tuesday)
An engineering chicken, demonic girl and a snake-like father
On Day 2, I made it to two screenings. First was Short Films 3 - a set of slightly strange shorts, some with a hint of horror creeping in. Then in the evening came WTF2025 - part of the festival’s annual tradition of celebrating a weird, but absolutely hilarious, collection of shorts.
Short Films Official 3
With so many films packed into the short film categories, I’ve decided to keep things simple: I’ll share a quick summary and a few thoughts on each one - and dive in a bit deeper for the ones that really stood out to me.
Luna rossa
Luna rossa starts with a disclaimer “Believe it or not - this is a story about love” and by the end I guess if your brain is still working you will probably agree. The story follows a “nefarious plot” (I don’t want to reveal any details), and what seems to be a secret agent who’s monitoring this “plot”. My favourite part of this short was the way all characters move - its so jarring but at the same time so fluid and “symphonic”.
Fusion
Fusion is a very short audio-visual experience. I’ve seen something quite similar at Annecy 2023 and its honestly quite hard to write about. The way the music complements the animation is amazing though.
Exploding Girl
Out of the ones in this selection, Exploding Girl is the one you can analyse for hours trying to understand the meaning and symbolism. The whole short feels like its straight out of a gory version of VR chat mixed with demonic Barbie’s playhouse. The plot follows a girl who explodes every day (sometimes multiple times a day). The explosions are quite violent and leave her gradually more scarred, and those around her turned to mince. My thoughts were that the story is symbolism for panic attacks, which for those who’ve experience them, can come out of nowhere, and often without an obvious trigger. There are scenes in this short that are brutal, and jarring (this is a word I keep repeating for this selection of shorts).
Dollhouse Elephant
Dollhouse Elephant was probably my favourite in this selection. The art-style and colours exuberated joy. The story follows residents of an apartment building - all of whom seem to have personal issues, which are often made worse by their neighbours. For example, the girl that lives on the top floor is extremely self conscious - feeling like “all eyes are constantly on her” (represented by actual eyes appearing on her body), or that smells in her environment will ‘attach’ themselves to her like a lingering cloud. This causes her to constantly take baths to clean herself - causing her to overfill her bathtub, which leaks into the flat below. The flat below has a girl obsessed with collecting plants, which get watered due to the leak - causing great frustration for her boyfriend who isn’t getting enough attention. Add to this another few neighbours each with their own problems (and eventually solutions) and you have a great story.
Sisowath Quay
Sisowath Quay is a story of a woman who turns into a terrifying demon. This one faced some technical difficulties with subtitles which meant I had to watch the first 60 seconds about 4 times - so I’ll probably remember that for the rest of my life. The tale is a great mix of an old legend brought into the modern world, alongside an environmental message. Being a short - me telling you that the woman turns into a demon already feels like a spoiler, so I’m not going to beyond that, but what stood out to me was the way characters were animated. It really felt like real people with their emotions and expressions plain to see. There’s a scene with shadow puppets which was also really well made.
WTF2025
WTF2025 had a lot of fun, weird and innovative shorts. It really lived up to its name - I actually was saying “what the fuck….” under my breath while credits rolled for most of them.
Due to the sheer number of films, I’ll list each one below and for my top three, give my thoughts. Some of these have releases online, so try to find them!
WTF2025 Films:
Adventures of Murder Man
The Joke’s Butt
A shitty movie
Kasey Cartoon
I beg your pardon
Bear Hunt
Skroll
Peter Hair
Nostril
Desk Bugs
Rabbits have red eyes
Adam and Even in the kingdom of animals
Mr Legs
Mamiko’s poop
Vinegar Mother
A taste of beer
Chicken in the flying eggshell
Out of this amazing list, the three I’d like to call out are: Peter Hair, A taste of beer and Chicken in the flying eggshell.
Peter Hair
This hilarious short by Adult Swim is actually on YouTube in full so you can watch for yourself, but I’ll just have to say, the creativity, animation, voice acting, everything is so well done. The fear of losing ones hair is one many men in their 20s onward usually have, so seeing it from the point of view of your hair is amazing. Since the short is on YouTube, just stop reading and go watch it now!
A taste of beer
This was probably the weirdest thing I saw in my entire week at Annecy. I still sometimes stay awake thinking about it. The short is a story of parental pride. Of happiness. Of sadness. Of fatherly love. Or maybe its nothing. I honestly don’t know. All I know is that the whole cinema hall was filled with collective confusion and laughter. I couldn’t find this one on YouTube or elsewhere, but I’ve added a screenshot below, so you’ll know if you ever find it, its the right one.
Chicken in the Flying Eggshell
This is not just one of the best out of the WTF collection this year, but one of the best pieces of animation I’ve ever seen. Its so thought provoking. So beautiful. It’s a testament to what’s achievable by a determined being.
Good news and bad news. Chicken in the Flying eggshell is currently not on YouTube, but luckily it will be available later this year! I’ve linked the trailer below and will update with a link to the full short once its released!
Summary
Day 2 at Annecy was wonderfully weird, and I hope the collection above helps you understand why.
In regards, to the Substack posts. I’ve been overly ambitious with my scheduled plan. During the festival itself, most of my screenings were in the late evening so it was hard to write my blog there. Mornings were busy exploring. And once I’m back in the UK, I’ve been back in my work-life routine.
My new idea is to post the diary over the next few weeks. This way it gives me additional time to reflect on the films, but also sneakily extends my Annecy experience. So see you soon!