2025 Oscars Short Film Contenders: ‘Beautiful Men’ Director Nicolas Keppens
Cartoon Brew is putting the spotlight on animated short films that have qualified for the 2025 Oscars.
Today’s film is Beautiful Men from Belgian filmmaker Nicolas Keppens. The short qualified three times for the animated short category of the Academy Awards, winning best short award at Kaboom International Festival, best animation at Aspen Shortsfest, and the grand prix at Hiroshima Animation Season.
Following three bald brothers on a trip to Istanbul for hair transplant surgery, Keppens’ stop-motion short focuses on the insecurities of this touching trio. Between the realm of fantasy and reality, Beautiful Men unfolds as a benevolent and caring view of aging as a man in modern society. The film was produced by Animal Tank (Belgium), Ka-Ching Cartoons (Netherlands), and Miyu Productions (France).
Cartoon Brew: Dreams and reality mix within your film, why did you choose to include this fantasy space in the realistic setting of this story?
Nicolas Keppens: In short, because it’s what I like in cinema. I’m a big fan of Federico Fellini, Alice Rohrwacher, and Apichatpong Weerasethakul, amongst others – all filmmakers that use the medium to tell something about the presence in a dreamlike state. What I like to do is explore characters that are very specific, people the viewer could know in real life. Beautiful Men (and also my previous short Easter Eggs) has a story that is very simple, but I put much more elaboration in the characters.
Once these characters and their struggles are known, it turns into a story about their emotions, into their way of perceiving the world around them which is (to me) a dreamlike space. I don’t care too much about plot, I prefer to focus on small stories but with great details in the character description. When we share funny or touching stories about someone, it ends more often than not with, “Ah, what a great, funny, odd… person.” I have some friends that are really good at telling these random stories, and they often use beautiful small metaphors. I try to build my films in the same way.
What was it about this story or concept that connected with you and compelled you to direct the film?
During a business trip in Istanbul, we stayed in a hotel that was in partnership with a hair clinic, which we didn’t know as the trip was organized by the studio I was working for. The first morning, at breakfast, we were surprised to see the other guests in the hotel. Almost every table was occupied by a European bald man, who was there for a hair transplantation, or just received one. It was absurd, but very touching at the same time. This subject was a gateway for me to tell something about masculinity, feeling insecure, and the ability as humans to undertake such a trip.
What did you learn through the experience of making this film, either production-wise, filmmaking-wise, creatively, or about the subject matter?
Beautiful Men is my first stop-motion film. I partnered again with Belgian studio Animal Tank, as Easter Eggs and Wildebeest were such nice experiences, but it was also their first stop motion. We learned a lot by listening to the animators, especially Iris Alexandre. The film was made very locally, as we had to shoot it in the local cultural center of Aalst, the small Belgian city I live in.
The floor was carpet and the ceilings very low as the only place they could give us was the conference room. In the eyes of the much experienced crew, it was a nightmare to start there, but we had to do it anyway. Combining the experience from seasoned animators, in addition with the flexibility they showed to adapt to the less-experienced crew, proved a nice setting in the end.
Can you describe how you developed your visual approach to the film? Why did you settle on this style/technique?
The first idea was to do 2d animation in a 3d designed background; that’s what we got funding for. But as we rewrote the script a last time with Angelo Tijssens, the film became much more about feeling lonesome and the palpability of skin. Suddenly changing the technique felt like the right thing to do. It had consequences as it’s more expensive, but the loneliness from a puppet all alone in a scale model spoke more to me than what I was able to do in 3d. Also the tactility of the silicone skin is much more efficient I think for this subject than a drawn skin. So that’s why finally it became this film.
I had to rethink some elements because drawing Istanbul was an option with the budget we had, but making it in scale was absolutely out of the question in the level of detail I was aiming for. That’s how I came up with the mist, which became an important thing, almost a character on its own.
The sound design was done by Nicolas Snyder. I knew his work especially from his collaborations with Joe Bennett. I really like how he mixes the foley and music into a vibrant soundscape. Because I’m such a fan, I gave him a lot of freedom. One of the important things was how the presence of the other brothers is always palpable. The idea of being lonesome without being alone. I think he did a really great job at achieving this feeling.
