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Animation That’s Definitely Not for Kids

From gruesome tales to plastic surgeries gone wrong to a little frisky business, enjoy this selection of animation that’s strictly for adults.

  • How Wings Are Attached to the Backs of Angels
    How Wings Are Attached to the Backs of Angels
    Craig Welch 1996 11 min
    The main protagonist of this short, surreal film is a man obsessed with control. In an automated world drained of all emotion, he is tortured by vague longings. Will he be able to transcend his obsessions and fears?
  • Paula
    Paula
    Dominic-Étienne Simard 2011 10 min
    Inspired by a real-life news item, this animated short paints a pulsating portrait of a mixed-use, working-class neighbourhood where young families cross paths with prostitutes, their interactions leaving unpredictable ripples in the motley fabric of urban life.
  • The Trenches
    The Trenches
    Claude Cloutier 2010 5 min
    This animated short by Claude Cloutier is a pictorial account of an attack on Canadian soldiers during WWI. On the edge of the battlefield, recruits are dreading the order to attack. At the signal, a young soldier leaps into a hell of fire and blood where the earth engulfs both the living and the dead. Blending archival images and Cloutier’s hypnotizing brushstroke, the film is a dazzling illustration of the futility of war.
  • Bydlo
    Bydlo
    Patrick Bouchard 2012 8 min
    An allegory of mankind heading for disaster, this animated short is a tragic vision inspired by the 4th movement of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition. Drawing on the composer’s brilliant ability to evoke work and labour in his music, animator Patrick Bouchard brings earth to life through animated clay sculptures, creating a tactile nightmare in which man is his own slave driver.
  • Caterpillarplasty
    Caterpillarplasty
    David Barlow-Krelina 2018 5 min
    A prescient, grotesque sci-fi satire that lifts plastic surgery to another level. Set in a state-of-the-art clinic, in a world where advanced technologies have given rise to new standards of beauty and prestige, Caterpillarplasty offers its sardonic take on a social obsession with beauty that’s spiralled out of control.
  • Sext Apes
    Sext Apes
    Laurence Vallières 2017 36 s
    YOUR PHONE IS HAVING MORE SEX THAN YOU. A bleak picture of sex in the digital age.
  • The Tesla World Light
    The Tesla World Light
    Matthew Rankin 2017 8 min
    New York, 1905. Visionary inventor Nikola Tesla makes one last appeal to J.P. Morgan, his onetime benefactor. Inspired by real events, this electrifying short is a spectacular burst of image and sound that draws as much from the tradition of avant-garde cinema as it does from animated documentary.
  • The Subject
    The Subject
    Patrick Bouchard 2018 10 min
    An animator dissects his own body, extracting memories, emotions and fears that will nurture his work. As he cuts into his skin with a scalpel, various symbolic objects recalling his past emerge. Reaching the heart after cracking his ribs, he succeeds in identifying the burden he’s been dying to cast off.
  • The Spine
    The Spine
    Chris Landreth 2009 11 min
    In this animated short, Oscar® winner Chris Landreth returns with a poignant story of redemption that takes us into the relationship between a man and a woman trapped in a spiral of mutual destruction after 26 years of marriage. The Spine continues Landreth's pursuit of a twisted, beautiful and highly original visual aesthetic, using digital imagery to create characters whose physical appearances are metaphors for their unique souls.
  • Sexy Laundry
    Sexy Laundry
    Izabela Plucinska 2015 12 min
    How can the flames of desire be rekindled after 25 years of married life? Izabela Plucinska’s erotic comedy, made entirely through the use of modelling clay, delves into the private lives of Alice and Henry, a couple in their fifties numbed by routine.
  • Aria
    Aria
    Pjotr Sapegin 2001 10 min
    Dans ce court métrage d'animation inspiré de l'opéra Madame Butterfly de Puccini, Butterfly est une marionnette vivant seule sur une île jusqu'à ce que débarque le beau marin Pinkerton. À la suite de leur union passionnée, le bateau blanc du marin s'en va, mais la marionnette porte en elle le désir de voir réapparaître son amant. D'autant plus qu'au creux de son ventre un océan de vie se développe et qu'arrive, sur le rivage du corps de Butterfly, un petit poisson sans défense qui, en grandissant, devient un enfant magnifique. Mais lorsque Pinkerton revient, il brise les espoirs de Butterfly en lui arrachant son enfant. Elle ne trouvera alors de réconfort que dans la mort. Mais comment mourir quand on n'est qu'une poupée?
  • Skin for Skin
    Skin for Skin
    Kevin D.A. Kurytnik  &  Carol Beecher 2017 15 min
    Skin for Skin is a dark allegory of greed and spiritual reckoning set during the early days of the fur trade.

    In 1823, the Governor of the largest fur-trading company in the world travels across his Dominion, extracting ever-greater riches from the winter bounty of animal furs. In his brutal world of profit and loss, animals are slaughtered to the brink of extinction until the balance of power shifts, and the forces of nature exact their own terrible price.

    With nods to Melville and Coleridge, directors Kevin D.A. Kurytnik & Carol Beecher have created a visually stunning contemporary myth about the cost of arrogance and greed.
  • A Feather Tale
    A Feather Tale
    Michèle Cournoyer 1992 5 min
    In this animated short, a woman, taking on her lover's fantasies, adorns herself in her finest feathers and assumes a seductive but demeaning role. Caught up in his own game, the man plays on to the bitter end--a cruel game in which love is stripped of its golden glow, leaving only the naked reality of dependency and desperation.
  • Madame Tutli-Putli
    Madame Tutli-Putli
    Chris Lavis  &  Maciek Szczerbowski 2007 17 min
    This stop-motion animated film takes viewers on an exhilarating existential journey into the fully imagined, tactile world of Madame Tutli-Putli. As she travels alone on the night train, weighed down with all her earthly possessions and the ghosts of her past, she faces both the kindness and menace of strangers. Finding herself caught up in a desperate metaphysical adventure, adrift between real and imagined worlds, Madame Tutli-Putli confronts her demons.
  • The Hat
    The Hat
    Michèle Cournoyer 1999 6 min
    A young woman works as an exotic dancer in a bar. She recalls an incident from her childhood in which she was physically abused by a male visitor. This inner journey brings back painful memories, including the obsessive image of a hat. Black-ink drawings, spare and rapidly executed, flow together in a succession of troubling and striking metamorphoses. The Hat is a tough, visceral experience. With naked honesty, animator Michèle Cournoyer invites the audience to share in the pain of a woman whose body is on display and whose soul is forever soiled. A film without words.
  • The Brainwashers
    The Brainwashers
    Patrick Bouchard 2002 12 min
    In this animated short, two chimney sweepers clear all the memories from their victim's brain in a quest to determine what goes on in a man's head. A chilling film filled with fearsome puppets inhabiting a world of strange objects.
  • The End of Pinky
    The End of Pinky
    Claire Blanchet 2013 8 min
    This short animation adapted from a short story by Heather O’Neill, who also narrates the film, follows three fallen angels seeking companionship in Montreal’s red-light district. The survivor of traumatic childhood experiences, Johnny is a handsome thief who finds himself drawn to Mia’s fragile beauty. Both have a soft spot for Johnny’s best friend and partner in crime, Pinky. But when one of Pinky’s endearing quirks sets off a tragicomic chain of events, Johnny plots his revenge with methodical detachment. Peopled with characters living on the margins of society, this film casts light on the frailty of human relationships. The film features hand-drawn pencil and pastel animation rendered in stereoscopic 3D.
  • The ErlKing
    The ErlKing
    Ben Zelkowicz 2002 5 min
    This animated short is a visual representation of Goethe's poem, The ErlKing that uses sand-on-glass animation set to the music of Franz Schubert. The moving images, resembling woodcuts, capture the haunting, nightmarish quality of the tale of the ErlKing who steals and kills a little boy.
  • Detention
    Detention
    Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers  &  David Seitz 2017 37 s
    This ultra-short film proves that walls are real and borders are imaginary with an animated critique of long-term detention for minors in immigration centres.