Dec 7, 2024

2025 Oscar Short Film Candidates: - Director Caroline Sandvik of Lovers

Cartoon Brew is putting the spotlight on an animated short film nominated for an Academy Award in 2025.

This article looks at the lovers of the Swedish film director Carolina Sandvik. Short qualified for the Academy Award by winning the best Nordic Short in the Nordic Panorama.

How Does a Relationship Change the people Participating In It - in this short mixed horror and non-romantic comedy, Carolina Sandvik reveals her own vision of the life of a couple forced to deal with escalating body transformations. The film is produced by Malmö-based We Have A Plan.

Cartoon Brewing: Silence and the inability to communicate and share your feelings take a big role in the deteriorating relationship between your two characters. How does it reflect your opinion on modern couples and relationships-

Carolina Sandvik: It's a silent film in the sense that there's no dialogue, but the images are words and Zhai I wouldn't be able to write a dialogue, I can't even imagine what these dolls say. My movies are all but opinions. I am interested in relationships. I myself am trying to figure out how to be a human being who interacts with other humans. Relationships are hard. My dolls are doing their best. They are together, but somehow distant. There's a contemporary obsession with our own individuality and self-optimization, and I'm inspired in this film. My character can literally buy a new face for himself. They can be resurrected again and again. Is it heaven or hell - I have my opinion, but I let the audience decide for themselves.

What was it that forced me to connect with you and direct a film about this story or concept-

This is a dream. Dreams are symbolic - maybe, if you ask Freud. Maybe it's the subconscious trying to send you a message. Maybe it's just decorative brain garbage. I think a lot about relationships. I have also been marinated in horror movies since my teens and it has become a natural part of my mindset when I make stories. I don't think of my films as genre films, but they are strongly influenced by them. I simply look at those drastic elements and feel happy to create.

Horror movies tend to speak directly to us through emotions and basic reactions. My ideas begin with emotions, fantasies and mystical images, not with a concept or an impulse to convey a specific message. I trust my ideas to unfold like a dream, and that's where I derail from the tracks of the genre. I don't necessarily follow a straight dramaturgy curve, but I trust my intuition a lot. For me it means I get closer to a kind of honesty, and the result is more like a dream than a smart one.

What did you learn through the experience of making this film, production-wise, filmmaking-wise, creative, or about the subject-

I learned how to invent the sound of skeletal feet walking on the floor. I chose twigs (fresh and dried), put them in bundles, twist them until they squeak, or put them on a chair and press them with my hands. The sound is usually more of a challenge than a visual. When it comes to the visual part, it's easier for me to translate ideas into physical forms through sculpture and animation. I usually do one take because the process is very time consuming and I don't have a lot of extra material when I'm done shooting. But in sound it's quite another thing. But it's so much fun. I really like that I invent my own world and making sounds for animation really means that you create everything from scratch

I also learned how to mix the exact amount of glue and acrylic paint and make skin easy to peel off. I learned that a 30-second tracking shot takes 14 hours to animate. I also learned how to work with producers.That is, she was able to stay in the studio and play with dolls, and she was able to grow up and take care of all the boring things.

Can you explain how you developed a visual approach to cinema - why did you settle for this style/technique-

Stop motion is the only technique I know. But I'm more inspired by live-action horror movies before cgi, back when you use masks, practical effects, and even stop-motion in live-action movies. It's very important to me that everything you see happens "for real" in front of the camera and on set. I will not add or erase anything to the post. Slowness and failure are part of the process. I like the contrast between the everyday subject of a falling apart relationship and Gore explaining it. I think animation technology will work, because I mean building the whole universe from scratch. And in this universe there is equal room not only for the illusory and absurd, but also for the mundane and relevant. There is no visible difference between the face of the character and the mask that he covers it.