In Our Hands

In Our Hands is an award-winning animated short film that examines the fragile relationship between the human body and the world it inhabits. As a fusion of dance and animation, we couldn’t resist it at Kuriositas, as so many of our posts are about one or the other  but so rarely both! Created in the Czech Republic in 2024, the four-minute film offers a quietly powerful meditation on responsibility, agency, and consequence.

Humanity, the film suggests, exists in a state of profound contradiction. We are capable of creation, growth, and care, yet equally capable of destruction and passive complicity as ecosystems unravel around us. Through its spare but expressive visual language, In Our Hands poses a deceptively simple question: if the future of nature, and of ourselves, rests in our hands, what will we choose to do with it?

Artist Kristián Mensa (Mr. Kriss) uses movement, dance, and animation to craft a poetic reflection on humanity’s place within the endless cycles of life. Bodies become landscapes; gestures echo natural rhythms; moments of harmony sit uneasily beside images of loss. The result is a film that feels both intimate and universal, inviting viewers to reflect rather than instructing them how to feel.

Directed, written, and artistically interpreted by Mensa, with cinematography, editing, and music by Jan Pivoňka, and animation by Petr Šenkýř and Ladislav Rejkuba, In Our Hands is a striking reminder that hope and collapse remain equally possible — and that the choice, however uncomfortable, is ours to make.