What is the film about?

When Fredericks twin brother becomes the world’s oldest man by a mere minute, Frederick finally sees his chance to take first place, by whatever means necessary.

What influenced it?

Part of the charm of Second to None and what I think catches a lot of people off guard is the contrast in look and tone. I wanted to make something that visually felt like something that might come out of Aardman or Laika, but when you got into the story, character and treatment you begin to see it’s much darker and a wee bit more gruesome.

A little background information...

I was looking to make a film about the lengths you would go to in order to achieve your greatest ambition and round the same time, I read an article about Jiroemon Kimura becoming the world’s oldest living man. His predecessor only held the title for 13 days and from there, the story of someone trying to claim the title of World’s Oldest Man began to form quite quickly.

How was the film made?

The film is stop-frame animation with puppets. My background is in live action, so I had never done stop-motion animation before. We had a very small crew, just 4 core people, and none of us had ever really done anything like this, so there was a lot of learning and trial and error. I ended up shooting the film myself given the limited budget, but we got an arts grant from Screen Ireland to make the film, so it was great to have the time and support to try something very ambitious.