16/07/2023 - The survival of humankind depends on our ability to laugh at our own mistakes, which is why the thematic Anča in Wonderland block has turned out to be one of the main highlights of this year’s festival

Diving headlong into the rabbit hole where anything is possible, this year saw Fest Anča introducing Anča in Wonderland, a programme exploring this year’s festival theme (utopias) even further by crossing the frontiers of conventional storytelling.

We jump through the looking glass and wind up in Wonderland, a bizarre “imaginarium” containing the funniest and most entertaining films submitted to this year’s edition of the festival. The selection is split into two 70-minute blocks, each of them proving a wondrous kaleidoscope of dark humour and insightful satirical commentary on the global disasters which humanity is currently facing.

Many of the films address topical issues through the lens of comedy, reminding us to always look on the bright side of life, a refrain that has repeated itself throughout history and ensured the survival of humanity (long before the Monty Python team sang it in Life of Brian). The concept of laughter being the best medicine might be a cliché, but it has definitely proven to be a good temporary solution while we try to remedy our most urgent environmental and social issues.

So let’s dive into a marvellous universe, where carrots improve your eyesight in unexpected ways, birds’ legs fall off, Pluto comes out to his planet family as a trans-Neptunian object and baguettes have evil intentions. The various films included in this programme make maximum use of the endless possibilities animation offers as an art form which allows almost unlimited creative freedom. If we compare, for example, Ori Goldberg’s 3-minute Don’t Die on Me, which uses a chaotic collage technique, to the sterile environment of Stephan Larson’s 3D animated film smush, we realise how vast the world of animation truly is.

Despite the stunning variety of styles and the diversity (and sometimes absence) of plots, several common themes emerge. One of these is a critical observation of consumerism and the toxicity of modern-day work environments. Don’t Forget the Straws, directed by Manuel Bustamante, is a rather literal interpretation of the subject. It exposes the nerve-wrecking lives of fast-food chain workers and entwines their struggles to withstand the pressure with their deepest past regrets. Katya Mikheeva’s Stuntcat transposes these same problems to the animation industry through a hilarious avalanche of action-packed sequences, unexpected betrayals and witty self-deprecation.

The Scottish-Finnish production The Job Interview by David Graham refuses to take the matter too seriously, offering a peek inside the imagination of a protagonist who can’t hold his concentration during an important, formal conversation. The rough, hand-drawn look of the film further amplifies the caricaturesque wanderings of his mind, leaving us laughing at the absurdity of his fantasies.

But before we take a stand against the system, we might first want to take a look at ourselves... The delightfully simple Hi! How are You? by Gaїa Grandin-Mendzylewski attempts to fill the void between our own self-doubt and our expectations of other people, using poignant, philosophical narration and minimalistic drawing. We dig even deeper in Anna Vasof’s non-narrative work Issues With My Other Half and in the daring stop-motion film Eat Your Carrots by Canadian director Laura Stewart. Both depict identity crises through experiments with body parts, especially the latter in which Stewart reimagines physical insecurities as a strange medical condition: an eye growing out of the character’s arm.

However, the undoubted highlight of the selection was a Hungarian diploma film by English writer-director David Crisp, a WORLD in CHAOS. The movie consists of dialogues between animals in their natural habitats, as they contemplate the meaning of existence and moral concerns defining our society. Their exchange of witty remarks follows a very effective pattern, one character displaying prejudice and a lack of compassion while the other serves as the voice of reason, defending the principles of ethics.

Anča in Wonderland has proven once again that dark comedy is a highly effective way of dealing with subjects we might otherwise find hard to discuss. We continue our search for the meaning of life, but the answer remains a mystery. The closest we can get to solving it, therefore, is through creating and enjoying art, and remembering to laugh a little from time to time…