15/05/2025 - We take a look at the second instalment of the Animation Festival Network’s compilation of shorts by female filmmakers from Central and Eastern Europe

The magical and the mystical are at the core of “That’s What She Said, Vol. 2”, the new compilation of short films directed by female creators from Central and Eastern Europe. Curated by programmers within the Animation Festival Network, this year’s collection showcases filmmakers from Czech Republic, Croatia, Slovakia, Ukraine, Poland, Slovenia and Hungary. Among the lineup, screened now at the Anifilm International Festival of Animated Films, four standout works delve into the messy experience of life, underscoring themes of alienation, hope and self-acceptance.

The last topic is what Hungarian writer-director Viktória Traub explores in her short Shoes and Hooves. Her richly illustrated animation centres on a young centaur-woman who dreams of having petite human feet. Fittingly, she works in a pedicure salon, and when she meets a crocodile-man who is also a shoe shop owner, she discovers that he has a yearning of his own.

Traub uses 2D computer animation to create an expressive world of hybrids – a surreal Zootopia-like society of half-animal, half-human beings (seal-birds, humans with chicken wings and more). Her imaginative world is rendered in deeply saturated colours: the fuchsia of the nail polish, the magenta of the nail salon, the hazel brown of the centaur-girl’s hair. One of the film’s most striking images recalls Botticelli’s Venus – the centaur-girl, with flowing hair and luminous skin, stands gracefully on four horse legs. This image deftly encapsulates the hollow promise of self-acceptance, the superficial “love yourself” message that is constantly peddled by both therapists and beauty industries. In a society of hybrids, her apparent wish to be whole remains stubbornly human. But the film makes one wonder: in such a world, why does she have this desire in the first place?

Secrets and desires take centre stage in the Czech-produced short Keep Out, directed by Hong-Kong native Tan Lui Chan. The director presents a dystopian world where each individual lives in a separate pod. With only a small round window to the outside, their connection to the world is entirely virtual, controlled by a Big Brother-like figure. The pod-dwellers are constantly live video streaming, rewarded with likes and tokens from this faceless authority.

Painted in muted yellow, brown and green hues, with jittery, textured movement, the film follows a chubby young boy who accidentally discovers that beyond the pod is a world of grass, wind and sunlight. After this stunning realisation, the boy does what he knows best: he starts live streaming from the outside. The rapid, rhythmic soundscape translates his excitement, inspiring others to follow his lead. After the initial excitement, however, most people crawl back into their pods, back to the familiar comfort of the panopticon cells. Yet, the unlikely hero sets off to see what lies beyond the cell and the authority’s control. In today’s reality of constant surveillance imposed by powerful tech corporations, Chan’s vision, straightforward as it is, definitely hits the nail on the head. The director gives her protagonist a chance, and her audience hope.

Hope also drives the poignant documentary short I Died in Irpin, directed by Ukrainian animator Anastasiia Falileieva. Reminiscent of Sofiia Melnyk’s Mariupol. A Hundred Nights, which featured in the original “That’s What She Said” selection, this Czech-Slovak-Ukrainian co-production reflects on the fatal night of 24 February 2022, when Russia’s full-scale invasion started. While Melnyk’s protagonist, a young Ukranian girl, was the embodiment of all Ukrainian children, Falileieva takes a more personal, autobiographical approach.

Rendered in minimalistic, black-and-white visual language, the short follows the director as she moves into the countryside house of her boyfriend’s parents after the war begins. In her voice-over, Falileieva narrates the psychological toll this move takes: she feels depressed and alienated, struggling to function in the new day-to-day reality. She is afraid to take a shower – what if the bombing starts while she is naked, and her body is found marked by cellulite? Falieleiva’s dark humour reflects how fear invades the most personal spaces. The idea that the war is partly a state of mind is explored through a mixture of hand-drawn pencil sketches and personal archival material like photos and videos, referring to her childhood, the war stories of her grandparents and how she learned to shoot a gun. Punctuated by rhythmic diegetic sounds, like ticking clocks, slurps and clinks, the short creates a claustrophobic environment in which Falileieva and her now-ex-partner drift apart.

While the Ukrainian director uses minimalist visual grammar to speak of the mundane, Polish filmmaker Barbara Rupik mixes various media to explore the space between reality and fantasy in Such Miracles Do Happen. This gentle stop-motion short follows a young girl in a rural area who cannot walk due to her boneless body. One day, the villagers witness statues of saints coming to life and wandering into the woods. Rupik uses clay puppets, slick with oil to convey a fragile, otherworldly feel. The girl’s gooey body appears shapeless, her skin wet and glistening, emphasising her vulnerability. Yet her curiosity is translated in the film’s hauntingly beautiful soundscape: chirping birds, animal calls, echoes and distant bells.

Rupik’s tender world is infused with spirits and miracles, and her use of stop-motion only underscores that. Her almost monstrous puppets are far from cute, but within their strangeness lies a sense of inexplicable harmony and childlike enchantment with the strange world where statues can walk and bodies don’t have bones. Overall, this creates a sense of deep porosity between the real and the imaginary. The miracle of the story echoes the miracle of the medium itself: stop-motion, a labour of love and tactile wonder.

Together, this volume of women-directed short films presents a kaleidoscope of vulnerabilities that manifest as strength rather than weakness. The diverse protagonists, from a female centaur to a boneless creature, from a chronically online teenager to a Ukrainian refugee, reveal different essential facets of humanity: the yearning for change and the desire to be seen and accepted.