Why we picked it – We like an animation once in a while and here is this year’s. Very funny.

Synopsis – 1980s New York. All the characters are animals. There is hardly any dialogue but a very evocative soundtrack. Dog is lonely and builds his own robot to have a friend (a companion piece to Brian and Charles from last season). Dog and Robot become inseparable and, as the summer comes to an end, they go the beach but Robot is rusted by water and cannot move. When Dog returns the next day with his tools, the beach has been closed until the following year. lying on the beach throughout the winter, Robot dreams of escape only to wake to reality. Robot is vandalised and ends up on pieces in a junk yard. Dog is heartbroken. Later, a raccoon named Rascal buys Robot’s parts and rebuilds him. They become friends. Meanwhile, Dog has bought a new robot. Tin. What will happen if they meet up again?

The film – Without a word of dialogue, the film explores emotions to which we can all relate: making a friendship, loosing it and recovery from that. Animation, free from the constraints of traditional storytelling, has always been a medium that conveys the power of dreams. There are no rules in a film about dreaming robots, after all. Why not have a snowman bowl with his head? Why not have birds who have nested in Robot’s body whistle “Danny Boy”? And why not have a movie-stealing Busby Berkeley dance number set along the Yellow Brick Road?  This was Pablo Berger’s first animated film and here he is talking about it.

Director – Pablo Berger Writer – Pablo Berger (from a graphic novel by Sarah Varon)

Links – imdb The Guardian review Time review