03/07/2024 - Delia Hess' festival-opener world premiering in Animafest Zagreb’s Short Film Competition depicts time at a standstill

In a fast-paced world that often sees us bombarded with supposedly urgent activities and things to do, this year’s Animafest Zagreb opened with the slow and hypnotic  7-minute Swiss animated movie On Hold, directed by Delia Hess, in the Short Film Competition. This soft charcoal work with melodious sound tells the story of a young woman who’s on hold on a hotline. She paces around the room, waiting on the phone. Aimlessly rubbing her big-leafed plants, dipping her finger in the fish tank, and playing with spilled water on the table, she loses herself in thought. The film flowingly links her with the activities people engage in in a city, against a meticulously monochrome urban backdrop.

The ordinary but also absurd nature of urban life is cannily portrayed through impressive visuals and sounds. The bold black of the spilled water on the table morphs into a canal in the city. Through clever visual representations and symbols, flow is infused into the film’s transitions and cuts: smooth, minimalistic lines depicting characters adopting yoga poses in a gym fuse with sculptured figures in a museum captured in frozen moments in time; a woman waiting for somebody by a fountain, which swell and overspills to form a cascade of water in the middle of the city, morphs into people jogging in public spaces; a man in a gallery filled with paintings which change as soon as he looks away, teasingly points to sudden, unnoticed changes in life. The recurring theme of pausing and continuation is a trope which toys with the overflowing of water, the river and the fish tank. People in the city who disregard their surroundings, using phones at a train station, working in a cafe, and getting about their business, become drowned in darkness.

Just one of the shorts featuring in this year’s Animafest Zagreb’s competitions, this surreal film provides the audience with a listless pace at which to ponder their present. It creatively conjures up the lingering and intangible nature of time and lulls the audience into a state of contemplation. These subtle themes come together to appeal to a collective state of consciousness, asking us to press pause and put our own lives on hold. This spectacular film without dialogue looks set to enjoy a promising future on the festival circuit. Be sure not to miss it when it does the rounds!