Every year it is my distinct honor and pleasure to review the Animation Program at the Brooklyn Film Festival. Ever since I first started writing for No Rest for the Weekend and Behind the Rabbit Productions, the BFF has been part of the repertoire, even though I’m geographically about as far away from Brooklyn as possible while still residing in the contiguous United States. The art of animation has always held a very special place in my heart, and it’s amazing to see what filmmakers come up with year in and year out, be they seasoned professionals working for major studios or ambitious students putting themselves out there for the first time. This festival has seen a wide range of talent, styles, and humor, and even gave rise to an eventual Oscar nominee.

Like nearly every year, the program has been subdivided along thematic lines. This time it’s a three-fold affair, as more and more submissions are included. The first is dubbed “Diving Into Dreams,” and deals with surreal stories and abstract subject matters. The second, “Beyond the Horizon,” focuses on different areas of the human experience through several lenses, both common and unique. Finally, the third, “Virtual Voyages,” gives us both figurative and literal trips and explores the many ways in which we express love, leaving us with a combined 28 entries vying for the hardware, over four and a half hours of content. Given the glut of wonderful stuff on display, it’s all but impossible to go over everything, but there is so much great, imaginative work to share, so I’ll do my best here with my personal favorite in each block.

Diving Into Dreams — JELLY

Directed by Robin Budd and produced by Nelvana Studios, the Canadian animation house behind the likes of Inspector Gadget, Beetlejuice, and a host of other favorites for 80s and 90s kids, Jelly is billed as a “modern fairy tale,” one that takes the viewer on a fantastic journey in its 13-minute runtime.

A young artist named Molly struggles with her life and her passions, trying to balance her love of design with the demands of the work-a-day world. Living in a studio apartment near an elevated train, her sculptures collapse due to the vibration of passing locomotives. Her morale is further dampened by her job at the ironically-named “Happy Mannequin” factory, where she paints faces and places wigs on model heads in an assembly line fashion.

After a rather humdrum day where she accidentally spills coffee on one of the heads, Molly decides to let her creativity flow properly, making increasingly odd busts to the delight of her colleagues and the disdain of her bosses. Punished with even more mundane work, she returns home, where she encounters a gelatinous blob who befriends her because it really likes what she can do, inspiring her to even greater ends.

I absolutely love the art style and color scheme here. There’s a clear Tim Burton influence, both in the forms of Molly’s work and the general tone of the film, focusing heavily on shades of gray and red, only going to full color at the end. Molly feels like a version of Lydia Deetz all grown up and coping with the real world, and her boss is reminiscent of the villainous Mom from Futurama. All of this blends with a somewhat shiny, Disney-esque aesthetic, like an alternative version of Paperman. The combination makes for a sneakily sweet tale about embracing your creative dark side and fighting against conformity. It’s absolutely spectacular.