Watch: Visit a Flooded Kolkata in Animated Short ‘Wade’ from India

Watch: Visit a Flooded Kolkata in Animated Short ‘Wade’ from India

by Alex Billington
April 29, 2022
Source: YouTube

Here’s a unique short film from India that we’re glad to post on FS made by an animation studio known as Ghost Animation. “A climate change horror story” is the film’s simple tagline. Wade is a mesmerizing 15-minute animated short film that is now available to watch online. This initially premiered in 2019 and it played at the 2020 Annecy Film Festival, as well as numerous other fests worldwide recently. In an alternate “post-apocalyptic” version of Kolkata, India, rendered unbearable due to the rising sea level, things take a dark turn when a family of climate change refugees are ambushed by a pack of tigers on the flooded streets. It is described as “an award-winning post-apocalyptic action animated short that grapples with what the world will look like in the wake of climate change.” There’s so many interesting creative decisions with this short – not only in regards to the climate change storytelling focusing on this kind of bleak future, but other tiny details like making the eyes so big and white, and drawing such humongous tigers. Check it out below.

Thanks to Short of the Week for featuring this. Brief description from YouTube: “In a version of Kolkata, India rendered unliveable by sea-level rise, things take a dark turn when a family of climate change refugees is ambushed by a tiger on the flooded streets.” Wade is a new short film made by “Ghost Animation“, an animation collective based in Calcutta, India. It’s both written and directed by filmmakers Kalp Sanghvi & Upamanyu Bhattacharyya. Featuring an original score by Troy Vasanth. The filmmakers state: “While there is a lot of nostalgic storytelling about Kolkata, being a space steeped in centuries-old culture and tradition, not very many stories envision the future of the city. Sadly, Kolkata, along with several other cities in the world like Bangkok, Dhaka, Shanghai, New York, and Amsterdam are extremely vulnerable to rising sea levels… The more we started thinking about how the whole city was living on borrowed time, almost waiting for an imaginary dam to breach, the more afraid we got. How does our life look after climate change?” For more info, visit SOTW or find the film on Instagram @WadetheFilm. To watch even more shorts, click here.

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