What is the film about?

A mousetrap snaps shut; a marketplace awakens. A group of men heatedly discuss how to kill the animal in the little box.

One after the other, they try to trump each other’s sadistic fantasies, and even a stranger’s suggestion to let the creature loose, turns out to be a sick manipulation. But as the macabre game unfolds and spirals out of control, both victim and tormentor suffer the same fate.

What influenced it?

Director Shadi Adib was born in Tehran. Her passion for drawing lead her to a B.D. as graphic designer from Tehran’s Fine Art Faculty and her M.A. as animation director. Her graduation film at Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg is FUSE. The film was selected at more than 130 festivals around the world and received several awards. After her work on “The Amazing World of Gumball” with Studio SOI, she’s currently working as a freelance artist. Her latest short film is the commissioned work “Ode”.

A little background information...

The visual potential of Sadeq Chubak’s work has always held a special fascination for me. The competing “worlds of thought” of the various characters in “Pache Khizak” are all too suited to be implemented in an animation form. Under their apparently cultured façade, there simmers a dangerous blend of instincts, disappointments and fear. When it cracks, moments burst forth that are at times terrible, at others sad, and sometimes even bitterly funny. But Sadeq Chubak never shames anyone. His characters always act as victims of their circumstances, as a community driven by egoism.

Their behavior is universal and human, a story such as this one could happen anywhere. There are countless levels of meaning: from making-a-mountain-out-of-a-mole to the sadism people are capable of. Each way of reading the story provides its own interpretation. Although the story is quite short – you can read it in 5 minutes flat – it has incredible depth and one can immediately grasp all the characters at once. Everyone knows his or her kind. I sensed this when reading the story to Europeans, seeing that their understanding of the story transcended cultural differences.

How was the film made?

The animation technique uses hand drawn outlines and aquarelle- and watercolors in order to tell the crazy atmosphere of this story with ferocious vividness.