"Beyond the Door" Animated Short Film for Annecy International Animation Film Festival 2024

"Beyond the Door" is a 1 minute 30 second short animation project I did with my classmate and friend, Azsmaan Zayne, as part of our Year 2 Semester 2 Studio project.
https://www.artstation.com/mikaelious_az

The film was featured in the Annecy International Animation Film Festival's "Paris-Lyon Singapour: Hopes and Fears" session.

DIRECTOR'S STATEMENT:
People constantly hold onto things that contain memories held dear to them, and it can be hard to let go of these items even if it's to their detriment. It is often said that in death you are left with nothing, but we think that the memories we bear immortalize the items we once clung onto, and as long as the memories remain, the essence of what the items represented live on too.

LOGLINE:
An old woman, at the point of passing on, struggles to choose between stubbornly keeping onto her worldly attachments and moving on into the vast unknown.

SYNOPSIS: An old woman reluctantly leaves her house and steps out into a vast white space with a large bell. She drags her house with her and rings the bell, causing a door and its Gatekeeper to appear. She struggles in trying to pull her large house through the narrow door, and fights off the Gatekeeper who is trying to stop her from doing so. Eventually, she fails and sadly lets go of her house to walk through the door. However, she realizes that she can immortalize her house through the memories she has of them and she willingly moves on and lets go of her worldly attachments.