Oscar Shortlist Interviews: Directors Karni Arieli And Saul Freed Share Their Favorite Shot From ‘Wild Summon’ (Exclusive)

We invited the filmmakers behind each of this year’s 15 Oscar-shortlisted animated shorts to share their favorite shot from their film and explain why it’s special to them. The pieces are being published in the order that materials were received.

In this piece, we’re looking at Wild Summon from filmmakers Karni Arieli and Saul Freed. The film premiered at Cannes and played in competition at Annecy over the summer before winning best animated short at Raindance and a special jury prize at L.A.’s Animation is Film.

The fantasy/natural history short follows the life cycles of salmon, except that the fish in this film take on the form of humans. Wild Summon’s surreal nature is grounded by ultrarealistic vfx and animation that lend it credibility, which only fades away after the film has been finished and the viewer pleasantly recalls the absurdity of some of what they’ve just seen.

Below, Arieli and Freed share their favorite scene from the short and tells us its significance:

This shot of our wild salmon baby in her egg encompasses the film’s concept in a single moment. The viewers are exposed to the surreal and groundbreaking idea behind the film: there is a human fetus in what looks like a fish egg underwater. And it’s wearing a diver’s mask! It’s the moment where our viewers might wonder what they are watching. A sci-fi film? A natural history documentary? We hear our fantastic narrator, Marianne Faithful, telling us this is a Salmon, a fish, and that we see the next generation and the hope for the whole species. The wild salmon’s incredible journey is in its first few moments.

The idea behind the baby phase of our fish was to create an emotional connection with our viewers, to use our human instinctual reaction to young babies, something very few of us can resist, and to make this a human journey that creates empathy and connection.

It’s also one of the only shots that repeats in the film. In doing so, it closes a perfect circle when our hero returns to her birth stream and gives life to the next generation.

Lastly, what makes this one of our favorite shots is the hidden homage to the master of cinema, Stanley Kubrick and his film 2001: A Space Odyssey. We are forcing viewers to look at themselves. The fetus is a universal, archetypal image of innocence and a symbol of our own human future.

Read the other entries in the series:

• John Musker on I’m Hip
• Flóra Anna Buda on 27
• Tal Kantor on Letter To a Pig
• Dave Mullins on War is Over!
• Bret Parker on Pete
• Yegane Moghaddam on Our Uniform
• Rita Basulto on Humo
• Jared and Jerusha Hess on Ninety-Five Senses
• Stephen Vuillemin on A Kind Of Testament
• Gabriel Augerai, Romain Augier, and Yannick Jacquin on Boom
• Priit Tender on Dog Apartment
• Stéphanie Clément on Pachyderme
• Lucija Mrzljak and Morten Tšinakov on Eeva
• Dan Abraham and Trent Correy on Once Upon a Studio