Stopmotion

Ella Blake’s life has been moving forward a mere 1mm at a time. Working in stop-motion animation with her esteemed but ailing mother, Ella is her mother’s hands, adjusting her creations and living in her shadow, leaving little time to focus on her own life. Everything changes radically after her mother suddenly falls deathly ill, and she meets a precocious young girl in her building who seems intent on encouraging Ella’s own artistic vision. The real world and Ella’s nightmare creation soon become interchangeable, threatening all those around her on the quest to discover her story’s end.

Robert Morgan’s stop-motion animation short films have amazed and disgusted film festival audiences for many years, including BOBBY YEAH and a segment in the ABCs OF DEATH 2, so it’s a perfect and personal transition to center his first feature film on that very same artistry. Best known for her role in the harrowing film THE NIGHTINGALE, Aisling Franciosi’s portrayal of Ella, as a woman under the influence of her morbid imagination, is more nuanced yet intense than a run-of-the-mill homicidal break with reality. Barreling towards a phantasmagoric ending, STOPMOTION will linger in your psyche long after the snap of the final frame.