What is the film about?

On a train journey without stops or destination, an observer goes to extreme lengths to avoid other passengers, a giant baby runs away from his parents, a romantic woman starts a relationship with a cuckoo, and a naive boy discovers that some problems cannot be fixed with pictures of unicorns.

What influenced it?

The main influence for this film was the concept of the absurdity of life that Albert Camus develops in The Myth of Sisyphus. I wanted to make a film about how different characters and their personality deal with the contradictions that the absurd entails; absurd beings in search for a sense, a meaning of life.

I was shown this stunning animation years ago and it was the very first one that introduced me to a whole new animation world.

A little background information...

Almost There is my graduation film completed at the National Film and TV School in 2019. I chose to make this film because I wanted to see if it was possible to make a film about life, and try to make sense with non sense.
I also wanted to explore this mix media technique of stop motion and digital drawing, see how they would work together and help the realism/surrealism aspect of the film.

How was the film made?

It took 14 months from writing to exporting to make this film.
We were a very strong team working together, Rich taking care of the stop motion animation while I was doing the 2D and directing the rest of the production, Theo (production designer) designing a train that had to be repetitive but not boring and building it in two different scales and Alana (DOP) having to find ways to animate lights and learning how to use a motion control camera.
There were a lot of challenges for this film to work out.

For more information and behind the scenes images, here is the lockdown making of: