Fly Mill is my graduation film in animation department of Estonian Academy of Arts. It is a stop motion puppet animation film. It is 7 and half minutes in length and it took me two years to complete it. I started developing the story in autumn 2009 and the film premiered in 2012.

The protagonist is a Miller living in a watermill. He bakes daily bread and raises ducklings whom he wishes one day to set free. But on the field next to his home, hunters go to shoot birds.

The film was inspired by photographs I took several years ago through an attic window looking upon an autumn field while the flies clambered along the window glass. These photographs reminded me of the photoseries “How to Hunt” by danish photographers Nikolai Howalt and Trine Soendegaard where hunters shoot birds on a field.

The Hunters were inspired by german fashion dolls from 1850ies. The dolls had porcelain hands and heads, bodies were clad in leather. Usually the fashion dolls were dressed in a pompous manner, but I liked their anatomical nakedness beneath the clothes. The Miller was inspired by old Japanese dolls. So I designed the heads as stiff porcelain and stuffed bodies from leather and fabric.

AWARDS

Grand Prix at 4th International Festival of Animated Films Tofuzi (Georgia, October 2012)
1st Prize at 11th Countryside Animafest Cyprus (Cyprus, July 2012)
Grand Prix at Primanima World Festival of First Animations (Hungary, October 2013)
Best Animation and Best student film at Early Bird Student Film Festival (Bulgaria, December 2013)
Best animated film at Backup Festival (Germany, May 2012)
Baltic film Grand Prix at Riga International Short Film Festival 2ANNAS (Latvia, May 2012)
Best debut at Semafor Film Festival (Poland, October 2012)
Bronze prize for the third best animation at 8th Tehran International Animation Festival (Iran, March 2013)
Best design at Animated Dreams (Estonia, November 2012)
Best Animation Technique Festival of European Student Animation (Serbia, August 2014)
Best Explora film and RTP Onda Curta Award at Curtocircuito International Short Film Festival (Spain, May 2012)
ARTE Prize Animated Films (Purchase and broadcasting of the film by the Court-circuit program of ARTE) at European First Film Festival of Angres (France, January 2013)
Honorary Mention at Dok Leipzig, 55th International Leipzig Festival for Documentary and Animated Film (Germany, November 2012)
Special Mention at Cutout Fest, International Animation Festival 4th edition (Mexico, November 2012)
Special mention at Animage, International Animation Festival of Pernambuco (Brazil, September 2012)
Special Mention from festival selector at Stoptrick International Film Festival (Poland, October 2013)
Special Mention for Animated Film at Short Visions International Short Film Festival (China, September 2014)
Silver Prize at RojaL Film Festival (Latvia, August 2015)
Second prize at H2T Festival (Finland/Estonia, May 2012)
Bronze prize at UNICA 2015, Union International du Cinema (Russia, September 2015)

MAKING OF

THE SET OF THE FILM

FILM STILLS

   

 

DESIGN

INSPIRATION

Photo series made  by me in 2004 from the attic window in my childhood home

How to Hunt photo series by Nikolai Howalt and Trine Soendegaard

Historic dolls from Germany and Japan

FILM SETS