^{Credit: Please (Apparat Filmproduktion, Miyu Distribution)} 

Love and loneliness are at the center of Anna Mantzaris’ stop-motion animated short, Please. Mantzaris’ film revolves around several loosely interconnected stories about people in dire need of human connection, going to desperate lengths to achieve it. One of those needy souls just so happens to be voiced by Stellan Skarsgård. Please is eligible for Oscar consideration thanks to its Best Nordic Short Film win at the Nordisk Panorama Film Festival. Cartoon Contender spoke with Mantzaris about her unique style, casting an Oscar nominee, and the honesty behind awkward humor.

^{Credit: Anna Mantzaris} 

Q: Please reminded me of Anomalisa with its stop-motion artistry and theme of loneliness. Was that film at all an inspiration? 

AM: That is a really great film, and I can see that they have some themes in common, but it was years since I watched it and not really a specific reference for my film. I think for PLEASE I was more inspired by Roy Andersson, Ulrich Seidl, and life in general. 

Q: To an extent, Please also calls to mind films like Magnolia and Crash with its loosely interconnecting stories. How did you conceive the film’s narrative? 

AM: I did a previous film ENOUGH during my master degree at Royal College of Art, which was built from multiple scenes and observations, all on the same theme, that together told a bigger story. I really loved that approach and wanted to develop it further. I’m a very visual storyteller, and I love real-life observations, so it feels very natural to build the film in that way. The film started with a theme I wanted to explore: our longing for love and our struggles around it, and then thinking about scenarios and characters that would embody that, and then working a lot with the structure to create the right dynamic and having the characters reappear throughout the story in a good way.

Q: The characters go to extreme lengths for love, but then again, the desire for companionship can drive people to do crazy things. Were any of the actions in the film inspired by real life? 

AM: Yes, I think many of them were. For example, my sister thinking for years that she had a small head (which she didn’t), as well as the clingy partner and the woman hugging the stranger’s dog. I also love the idea to let the puppets act more extreme than us, they get to do the things we might feel sometimes but don’t act on. In a sense, they channel our repressed inner emotions.

Q: The puppets all appear to have a felt texture. How were they made? 

AM: They are made with a wire armature so that they can be posed into and hold different positions when animated. Then the body is made from mattress foam and hard light pieces in the chest and hip and head. The outside is covered in felt sheets, and the feet are made of metal with tie-downs inside, so the puppets can be screwed to the floor while animating. It’s a lot of work behind, for this film, we made over 40 puppets, which is a bit nuts thinking about it in hindsight! 

^{Credit: Please (Apparat Filmproduktion, Miyu Distribution)} 

Q: The sets also have a ton of personality, even everyday locales like the chip aisle of a grocery store. What was the construction process like? 

AM: I wanted it to feel like it could be in a Swedish city, so I was using some real references like Coop grocery store and the metro station. But then I also try do distill and simplify it a bit, rather than totally imitating reality. I worked closely together with the set designer Amanda Aagard, and we made a plan for each set, with references, colours, measurements etc. And then the sets were built between three different teams, and lit and shot between three different countries. A lot of work went into ensuring they all had the same look even though there was different teams working with different sets.

Q: The film has many impressive shots, a standout being when one character proposes with fire. How was that scene executed? 

AM: That scene was a fun one! We used LED light strips, programmed to flicker, and shot the scene with them in place, so that the flickering light affecting the set and the character is real. Then we also shot a clean image of the street. And then I animated fire flames in wool on a separate glass plane, which was then comped into the shot. I love doing things in camera, but sometimes a hybrid solution is the better choice, animating the wool in camera would have taken another week or two for that shot only.

Q: Awkward comedy is perhaps the most human kind of humor. Is that what draws you to it?

AM: I just love the recognizable. When you watch something and it’s funny, but it also hurts because it’s real. I love when it’s painful and funny at the same time. And the type of humor that, in different ways, reveals that we are all the same, with our little flaws and struggles.

Q: Please only has a few spoken words of dialogue, although you got some big-name actors to deliver these lines. Among them is Oscar nominee Stellan Skarsgård. How did he come on board? 

AM: I was really lucky that my producer is also the landlord of Stellan’s office in Stockholm. He sometimes fixes the radiators, etc. He asked Stellan if he wanted to be the voice, and after Stellan read my script, he was in! It was funny, I had to ask him to make the voice flatter and less powerful, because his voice is very impressive, and the character he played should not be. 

Q: Please has qualified for Oscar consideration by winning Best Nordic Short Film at the Nordisk Panorama Film Festival. What has it been like experiencing the film with festival audiences?

AM: It has been so fun and rewarding! When you work on an animation its over such a long time span, and you watch it over and over again and almost get blind for what it is. You don’t see a film anymore, you just see the frames. To watch it with an audience allows you to take a step back and see it again, and it’s very comforting that it actually was a film and not just frames, and that people like it and relate to it!

^{Credit: Please (Apparat Filmproduktion, Miyu Distribution)} 

Q: The people in Please are all coping with similar emotions, but is there a particular character you identify with the most? 

AM: I think the woman hugging the stranger’s dog is the one I identify the most with. Haha.

Nick Spake is the Author of Bright & Shiny: A History of Animation at Award Shows Volumes 1, 2, and 3. Available Now!