Torn Family Tree — Short Film Art-House / Symbolic Animation · 15s (paper-cut vignette)
Logline: A woman's silhouette is slowly bound by her own family tree — a wordless meditation on honor, control, and what remains when the branches finally let go.
Synopsis: A young woman stands centered in stillness, a layered paper silhouette in warm ivory and white. Dark paper branches — shaped like a family tree — grow inward from both sides of the frame, wrapping around her shoulders and arms. As they tighten, a thin tear opens at her center. She doesn't break into violence; she breaks into paper — fibers separating gently, without blood, without a wound. The fragments lift, transform into small white birds, and rise into a dark open sky. The final frame holds on the empty space where she once stood — the branches left with nothing left to hold.
Visual direction: Handcrafted paper-cut collage visible fibers, torn deckled edges, layered card stock, soft stop-motion imperfection. Low-key directional light from the upper left, a single continuous camera move (slow push-in, a gentle high-angle tilt at the break, a macro pass on the tearing paper, a rise into the sky, a pullback to close), restrained in palette — ivory and paper white for her and the birds, charcoal and muted brown for the branches, dark blue-black for the sky. No blood, no weapons, no text only paper and light.
My role: Concept development, symbolic story design, shot and camera choreography, color and lighting direction, and the full single-take animation, composed as one continuous, restrained gesture rather than a cut-together sequence, in the tradition of imagery that speaks through objects and stillness rather than exposition.
