Please (2026)
There is a particular kind of magic to stop motion when it is done with real care, and Please, Anna Mantzaris's latest short film, has it in abundance. I came to it through the BFI London Film Festival knowing her earlier work, the gloriously deadpan But Milk Is Important and the Apple short Fuzzy Feelings among them, and she remains one of the most quietly distinctive animators working in the form. This is a lovely little thing, warm and strange in equal measure, and I came away giving it three and a half stars.
The film is a dark comedy about something very simple and very universal, our need to love and to be loved. Rather than telling a single story it moves through a series of loosely connected scenes, little vignettes of people reaching for closeness and acceptance, and the stories gradually overlap and reappear until they form a sort of collective portrait of longing. It is a film about the needy, pathetic, embarrassing sides of ourselves that we spend so much energy trying to hide, and there is a real tenderness in the way it holds those feelings up to the light rather than mocking them.
What makes it work is the craft. Mantzaris's characters are these endearing fuzzy felt figures, soft and slightly shabby and instantly loveable, and the handmade texture of it all gives the whole thing a gentle, tactile charm. The animation is beautifully controlled, every small gesture and pause doing a surprising amount of emotional work, and it is the sort of thing that reminds you why painstaking frame by frame animation still matters when so much around it is slick and weightless.
It is also, for such a short piece, genuinely funny. There were several moments that made me laugh out loud, the absurdity landing precisely because it sits so close to something recognisable and a little sad. That balance, the comic and the melancholy sharing the same breath, is hard to pull off and Mantzaris makes it look easy. It helps that the voice work has real presence, with Stellan Skarsgaard lending his unmistakable weight to one of the characters.
If I have a reservation it is only that the loosely connected structure means it drifts rather than builds, and I occasionally wished for a single thread to hold onto a little longer. But that is a small quibble with a film this charming. Three and a half stars. Please is tender, absurd and quietly moving, a reminder that wanting to be loved is nothing to be ashamed of, and further proof that Anna Mantzaris can do more in nine minutes of felt and patience than most films manage in two hours.
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