Beyond the Dust

This animated short directed by students at ESMA tells the story of two distinctly different robots who have the unenviable job of cleaning and maintaining an abandoned home.  As the dust piles up, they both begin to be aware of the possibility of a life beyond it, but any attempt to leave the mundanity of their existence is quickly halted by their all-seeing supervisor.  It comes to a head when the smaller of the two robots accidentally turns on the TV and watches a nature documentary. Will they ever get to experience what lies beyond the dust?

This very touching science-fiction animated short is nothing short of brilliant.  I’ve said this time and time again about ESMA graduation work – it is so very difficult to distinguish their work from the professionally created shorts that one can only imagine a very rewarding future ahead of  them in the animation industry.  The characters of our two protagonists come across very well through their actions right from the start – and this is what really makes the short work (and is very difficult to pull off in something without dialogue even when your characters are human, let alone animated robots).

There are tropes at work, to be sure, but that is very nearly always the case in very nearly all works of science fiction these days.  I have to say that this would fit right in as an episode in the LOVE DEATH + ROBOTS series on Netflix (I think it’s superior to some of the works shown there, I have to say).  So, congratulations to all involved, especially the directors Alexia Ameline, , Marin Benitez, Lucien-Paul Bigey, Marine DuPot, Benjamin Hack, Matteo Michel, Salomé Quillien and Juliette Vignollet.