Borrowed Time

An old sheriff returns years later to the edge of a cliff. He remembers what happened there: as a young man he was in a wagon with his father, there was an accident, and the wagon was left hanging over the edge. What followed tied him to that spot for the rest of his life. Andrew Coats and Lou Hamou-Lhadj direct. Both worked as animators at Pixar and made this outside working hours with their own resources; the studio allowed the use of equipment but the film does not belong to Pixar. It runs about seven minutes. The idea is guilt. The narrative does not fully say what happened until the last moment and proceeds in the order of remembering; the audience understands at the same moment as the sheriff. The form is a western. The palette, the landscape and the costume belong to the genre, and the choice is deliberate: the directors said they wanted to show that animation does not belong only to children's forms. There is no speech. The narrative runs entirely on image and music. It travelled the festivals and became one of the frequently cited works in short animation. Who it is for: viewers who like short animation and drawn narratives on adult subjects. Who it is not for: it is very short, the subject is heavy, and there is almost no metaphor; the film plays a single emotion.