The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse

A thirty-four-minute animation from Charlie Mackesy's 2019 illustrated book. Mackesy co-directed it with Peter Baynton. A boy lost in the snow meets, in turn, a mole, a fox and a horse. There is almost no plot; the film moves from sentence to sentence. The book's most quoted lines are here, including the mole's answer when asked what the bravest thing he has ever said is. The animation was made by hand to keep the ink line of the book, and the frames deliberately show the watercolour texture and the wobble of the drawing. Tom Hollander voices the mole, Idris Elba the fox, Gabriel Byrne the horse and Jude Coward Nicoll the boy. It won the Oscar and the BAFTA for animated short in 2023. Who it is for: viewers who like calm, therapeutic work that speaks directly through feeling; watchable with a child. Who it is not for: anyone who keeps their distance. The text is made of consoling lines, and for a viewer who finds that too sweet and too easy, thirty-four minutes will feel long.