Animation: Alice Dunseath's short animation inspired by David Hockney

Short films can often fall into the trap of a jarring sentimentality, but Alice Dunseath perfectly treads the line between quiet grief and witty observations about those around her in this beautiful animated short. Hunting for Hockney documents the journey she and a friend made to find David Hockney’s Yorkshire home in the midst of the grief of losing a loved one, and the frustrating difficulties of organising a funeral. Sad and funny in equal parts, she succeeds brilliantly in capturing the otherworldly pastel colours of English landscape with fragile snaking lines, intertwining the soft Yorkshire accents of people they happen to meet and elevating Hockney to an lamppost mystical figure in the process.

Filmmaker and animator Alice worked as a third assistant director on Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr Fox before moving not to freelance work, training her eye with the bets of the bunch, so the quiet poignancy of this film shouldn’t come as a surprise. Here’s hoping for more yet to come!