Barking Island by Serge Avedikian – Winner Palme d’Or

By far the best short film in competition in Cannes - and I’m not just saying this because it won the Palme D’Or, Barking Island (Chienne D’Histoire) had all the right ingredients for an interesting cinematic experience: original style, a good story and engagement in a wide range of emotions.

The audience is faced with the events taking place in Constantinople 1910, when in order to eradicate the massive amounts of street dogs, the government decided to move them to a deserted island and let them die. Although focusing on the dramatic abandonment of the animals by the same people that used to feed and pet them, Barking Island doesn’t fail to present the human perspective: the reasons that made the animals become a problem in the first place and the officials’ attempts to find better methods for solving the crisis.

Animated using paint, the film delivers a series of original creative techniques. If in the beginning the action is presented through large, detailed shots, as the story becomes more involving and dramatic the brush stokes thicken, the shapes mingle and the clearly-defined contours become merely sketched. Immersed in its dominant shades of green, grey and brown, it becomes almost impossible to resist the emotional involvement the film creates, while the subject provokes thought even long after exiting the cinema theatre.

By Maria Dicieanu