2025 Oscars Short Film Contenders: ‘The Garden of Heart’ Director Olivér Hegyi
Cartoon Brew is putting the spotlight on animated short films that have qualified for the 2025 Oscars.
In this installment, we’re looking at The Garden of Heart from Hungarian filmmaker Olivér Hegyi. The short earned its Oscars qualification by winning the best animated short award at Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival.
A young aspiring painter with low self-esteem is in his last round of interviews at the painting department of the Academy of Fine Arts. While waiting for his interview, his inner demons appear to him in the form of garden pests, feasting on his self-confidence. The film is produced by Hungary’s CUB Animation and Slovakia’s Artichoke .
Cartoon Brew: With this film, you pay tribute to the works of naive painters. Could you elaborate on your influences and how they shaped your work in this particular film?
Olivér Hegyi: Yes, I’m a huge fan of naive art and there was a period in my life when I was really searching for them. I love the passion of these artists, and the fact that they create these pictures just for the joy itself with the honesty and the enthusiasm of a child. And they are somehow always out of the circle, so the institute rejects them.
Even the title ‘naive’ is a bit unfair. It gives the vibe that they know less in a way. I think they know even more, because they haven’t lost the connection to their inner child. But the institution or the industry doesn’t really care about your inner child; it just wants you to become a professional. This is the case of some conservative art universities as well. That’s why I thought it could be a suitable situation for the plot.
What was it about this story or concept that connected with you and compelled you to direct the film?
As an artist or a person who creates something it’s always been so difficult to deal with my destructive inner voices. We could call it the voice of my ego, and it has so many different faces. One is telling me that my work is not good enough, the other says that I’m better than anyone else. It seems to be the opposite of each other, but in my own opinion, both are coming from the same source. I wanted to make a film depicting these voices in a funny way.
What did you learn through the experience of making this film, either production-wise, filmmaking-wise, creatively, or about the subject matter?
I didn’t expect that I could stop being so critical with myself by the end of this project. Unfortunately, it didn’t happen, but it was such a relief to dig a bit deeper and take so much time watching my automatic reactions in certain situations. I think living with those anxieties and self-criticism has become a little bit easier. And I learned a lot about patience as well. I also learned that it’s better to jump to another part of the work whenever I feel that I’m stuck with something. Forcing something never leads to anything good.
Can you describe how you developed your visual approach to the film? Why did you settle on this style/technique?
From the beginning I knew that I wanted to make something with the essence and taste of naive paintings. I thought the topic of this film matches well with this atmosphere of imperfection, but I was so much into naive art at that time anyway. So it was natural for me to start going in that direction, and I also wanted to update my TVPaint skills a little bit. So I thought: What if even the animated parts were made with the same brush and technique as the backgrounds? With this film, I wanted to create an atmosphere in which good vibes meet imperfection in a way.
