Hedgehog’s Home (Quebec)
Sun, Feb 4 | 1:30pm | Capital 6
One part Wild West with thanks to Darko Rundek‘s music and another part Dr. Seuss, this stop-motion animated work may well be an Aesop’s fable on top. The narration by Kenneth Walsh is simply spot on and delightful! He helps guides viewers on Hedgehog’s journey. From meeting Fox and having a delightful lunch to heading home, not everyone is in on the conniving canid. He simply wants to know what makes a home so special. For a moment, I thought he wanted to eat Hedgehog.
This work is a winner of more than 25 international awards and honours, including an Annie Award nomination for Best Animated Short Subject, the Young Audiences Public Prize at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival and the Short Film Audience Award at Animafest Zagreb. After seeing this product, I can certainly understand why with the story originally written by Branko Ćopić.
This Balkin tale is very relatable. The lessons offered tease at a bittersweet irony of how one should never stray too far from the beaten path.
Filmmaker Eva Cvijanović believes home is much more something that we create, an action more than a place, and deeply based in cultivating feelings of belonging and security. “This being said, yes, absolutely, the original text was written right after the Second World War, at a moment in history when there was a need within a newly formed Yugoslavia to create and assert its own (unified) national identity, so this sentiment can be appropriated by today’s extremist forces for divisive rather than unifying purposes, and I am conscious of it.”
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