The Manor (Le Manoir)

The Manor (or Le Manoir in the original French) is a French production but as it is essentially wordless there is no language barrier to fear if you do not speak the language.

You may wonder, however, what the Victor Hugo quotation at the beginning means. In a nutshell it translates as I have always wondered quite what the great watchmaker of the universe could look like.

However you translate watchmaker in this instance, animators Remi Martin, Thomas Pradier and Alban Kasickci present their particular rendition here. He may not be quite what you imagined (and certainly not as well organised) but here we get an opportunity to see the great watchmaker experiment with the universe on quite a scarily ad hoc basis.

As ever with this team of extremely talented animators and storytellers this is exceptionally well done work with elements of dark and light playing off each other beautifully. There are touches of wonderful visual humor here counterpointed by a shadow cast by something that looks more than a little like us. Enjoy.