Rob Munday

AAAAAAAAAAAAARGHHHHHHH!!! Have you ever felt like screaming? Primal screaming…right from the gut, as loud as you can? Well, this is exactly what happens to the central protagonist in David Dell’Edera’s hazy summertime animation Balcony and turns out, it’s pretty contagious.

A narratively slight film, Balcony begins as a meandering journey through a community centred around a block of flats. Drenched in sunshine, we float around the neighbourhood, meeting its inhabitants and enjoying a lazy, sunny afternoon. However, when a man turns up and starts screaming for no reason, the residents can’t help but join in. And after watching Balcony you might join in too!

Revealing in a Skwigly Q&A from Encounters Short Film and Animation Festival, that his film was inspired by a “boring vacation”, Dell’Edera says he was looking to “shake the audience out of their everyday life” with his simple, but oddly powerful storyline.

And he’s somewhat succesful in achieving this goal. Balcony doesn’t have the type of storyline you’d be dying to talk about after watching, but there’s something raw and visceral about experiencing it. Dell’Edera captures the haze of summertime so perfectly you can almost feel the warmth of it, but it’s the contagious feeling of the screaming that has the oddest effect.

Everytime I’ve viewed the film, both in a festival environment and online, I’ve felt like screaming along – but being the polite Englishman I am…I never have. But that feeling of wanting to reach deep and let out a primal scream is a powerful thing and you can see why certain people feel it’s a good way to battle stress or frustration.

Balcony was created as Dell’Edera’s grad film from Budapest Metropolitan University and is a mix of 2D (the characters) and 3D (the backgrounds) animation.

If you want to watch more films about screaming, why not check out Simon Cartwright’s BAFTA-nominated, Sundance short MANOMAN or Johan Palmgren’s fascinating doc The Flogsta Roar.