Playing Ghost

Getting the right balance in any media when it comes to the subject of bereavement is a difficult task – to do so in a wordless stop-motion short is something of a miracle.  Yet this is what director Bianca Ansems and her team manage to pull off in Playing Ghost, a 2011 graduation animation film from the National Film & Television School in the UK.

It tells the story of a mother and daughter, directly after the premature death of the man who was husband to one and father to the other, and how they come to terms with the huge, unspoken gap now present in their lives.  It’s a very touching short film, produced by Andrew Start and deftly and sensitively written by Catriona MacLean.  Little wonder, then, that Playing Ghost has gone on to win a number of awards, including the Grand Jury Award at Hollywood International Student Film Festival.