Jason Sondhi

A new batch of Gobelins shorts direct from France! 8 new shorts debuted this week on YouTube, and the quality is as we’ve come to expect from the well-regarded animation school.

One Day is my favorite of the group, so I’m pulling it out for highlight. While pleasing to the eye, the film is also simply great storytelling—truly Pixar-esque in its way of combining subtle fantasy, with emotional character development. The fact that it accomplishes this in only 4 minutes is all the more impressive.

Our main character lives in what we come to see is a magical house. Artful landscapes, tremendous vistas, pristine lakes, we see our character and his home presented in many kinds of exotic locales. Yet each day we see in his journal an image and the words rien á faire – nothing to do.

A common fantasy trope, we see that what on the surface seems like an amazing gift is in fact a curse. Our traveling man has no direction, no community, and no love. A chance encounter gives him the opportunity for human connection, but will his peculiar condition prevent him from exploring it?

The film is lean, and some elements may be lost with casual viewing, but it is an affecting package for the careful viewer.