Dec 13, 2024

2025 Academy Award Short Contender: “A Crab In The Pool” by Alexandra Miyot and Jean-Sebastien Hamel

Cartoon Brew spotlights animated shorts that have been nominated for the 2025 Academy Awards. [In this issue, we present “A Crab In The Pool” by Alexandra Miyot and Jean-Sebastien Hamel. The short won the Anim'est Trophy at the Anim'est International Animated Film Festival, Best Animated Short at the Shorts Short Film Festival, and qualified for an Academy Award.

In a rundown town, Zoe and her brother Theo are fending for themselves. Adolescent Zoe is an angry teenager, haunted by inner fears. Theo, still a child, escapes from reality into a fantasy world. On a scorching summer day, the two children must burst the abscess in their relationship in order not to lose each other. This short film was produced by Montreal-based Sémaphore Films.

Cartoon Brew Relationships between children of different ages are not often portrayed in this way, especially in animation. How did you research these relationships? And to what extent are they drawn from your own experiences? When we started writing the film, we researched how children and teenagers are affected by the death of a loved one at different ages. As it turns out, teenagers like our character Zoë are very aware of the end of death and become depressed, rebellious, and angry. Young children like our Theo have difficulty understanding that the person who has died is gone forever. They may seek refuge in an imaginary world where their loved one may return.

We also find inspiration in our own lives. Zoë and Theo are, in a sense, avatars of the two of us: Zoë is Alexandra, the one who is frightened of the cancer looming, and Theo is Jean-Sebastien, the one who suffers with his loved ones and witnesses events but is somewhat left behind. For example, Theo's glasses were made by Jean-Sebastian. When he was a child, his sister suffered from motion sickness on every trip, so Jean-Sebastien pretended to see her with these special glasses, making her laugh and forget her discomfort.

The film is inspired by a very personal experience. Alexandra was diagnosed with breast cancer seven years ago, as was Jean-Sebastien's mother. Fortunately, both of them survived, but many others, like the characters in this story, do not. Breast cancer is a very difficult subject to talk about because it makes us vulnerable; living with it in our heads for more than two years can wear you down after a while. At the same time, we have so many stories to tell and life is so short. My wife and I have been together for 15 years now, and this awareness of dealing with illness and now inevitable death has created a sense of urgency that we both need to make a film that will allow us to fulfill ourselves as artists, but also face our demons.

After every screening of this film, people come up to us and tell us that they know someone close to them who has died from the disease.

What have you learned about the production aspect, the filmmaking aspect, the creative aspect, or the subject matter through the experience of making this film? But in the process we learned to incorporate improvisation. We weren't happy with the ending, so we scrapped it about three-quarters of the way through and made another ending. We found that the best ideas often come under pressure. And some of the wildest visuals popped up just before we fell asleep.

This was the first time the two of us had ever worked together with a full 50/50 creative decision-making process. We had to learn to let go of our egos and always think about what was best for the story. We found a good balance by playing to our individual strengths and weaknesses, and were very fluid in how we divided up the different hats of production. Fortunately, neither our professional nor personal relationship broke down in the process.

How did you develop your visual approach to the film and why did you settle on this style/method?

We are both children of the 90s, so we grew up with MTV's Liquid Television and their surreal and quirky 2D animation. This animation style is basically in our DNA, so it was natural to apply it to our story, which is psychedelic and silly, yet emotional.

The film was made on a very small budget and 95% of the work was done by just the two of us: script, storyboards, animation, editing, and even some of the voices... about 4000 hours of work over two years. This forced us to find a simpler, more minimalist method of hand-drawn animation. But since we work in animation, we have the privilege of bringing our wildest ideas to the screen. Our imagination is limited and we have to use it. We always enjoy sprinkling in unexpected transitions and visual surprises to keep our audience engaged.