Eight minutes. No dialogue. One man's leg vs. the entire forest. Who wins?
An excellent example of how sometimes dialogue is not necessary, Totems is a visual display of our inner animal disposition. A lumberjack is working in a forest when a tree falls down and his leg gets stuck. As he is trapped in a beautiful but cruel environment, the despair awakens his primal instincts.
Sound
Éric Godon's non-verbal performance carries entire emotional arc.
Director
Paul Jadoul
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Part of a wave of Belgian animated shorts exploring human-animal boundaries, influenced by regional folklore around wild men of the woods.
Jadoul spent months studying actual lumberjack injuries to get the trapped-leg physics disturbingly right.
FR
