Rise Age Short Film - Mesmerising Animation About Environmental Collapse

It may take you a while to fully comprehend what the title of this intriguing animated short means – for me, it had to be made explicit at the end…  Yet there is something quite mesmerising about this animated short by Tatjana Theuer, who created this while doing her postgraduate course in Motion Design at the FilmakademieBaden-Württemberg.  As a “student film” this is astonishingly mature work.

It tells the story of a community of sea-slug type creatures, happy in their carefree crawliness which is orchestrated and coordinated from above by a choir.  Yet as they go about their daily lives, something invisible threatens their way of life – but even after one group after another disappears, nothing seems to stop them from going about their business. Still, one by one they disappear.  This is all accompanied by the mesmeric “song” of their leaders, that with only small pauses as the destruction overtakes them, carries on regardless.  It was only towards the end I realised that this was about our rising sea levels and how we have done little or nothing to prevent it – in fact, we are the cause.

Take a look at Rise Age, which has to be one of the more charismatic animated shorts presented by students this year  – it is as thought provoking as it is entertaining.