The Secret Adventures of Tom Thumb

A boy is born the size of a small doll. Before long he is taken from the house to a genetics laboratory, where he sees experiments being done on others like him. He gets away and sets out through an enormous, filthy, dangerous world to find his father. Along the way he meets people his own size. Almost nothing is spoken throughout; sound and movement carry the events. The film was made at the bolexbrothers studio in Bristol and its technique is unusual: pixilation, the frame-by-frame animation of real actors, used together with puppet and model animation. When the director Dave Borthwick found that professional actors lacked the patience to hold still for hours, he gave the leading parts to animators and technical crew. The result is a world that looks less like a children's tale than a nightmare. The title music is by John Paul Jones.