Winner of the 2025 Vimeo Staff Pick Award at Annecy, a prize that combines a festival award and a Vimeo Staff Pick all in one, Les Bêtes is a beautifully lit black and white short that is equal parts magic and terror.
“Les Bêtes was conceived to be a zero-budget, entirely recycled film in the style of a 1930’s Ladislas Starevich animation,” director Michael Granberry told us. “Even the stop-motion characters, all of which were originally constructed for other projects that never materialized, were repurposed after rotting away in storage for almost two decades.”
Note the use of the word rotting. It’s a clue as to how this story will unfold, following a mysterious rabbit with a set of magic keys as he assembles a host of strange creatures to entertain a wicked king.
“Made of foam rubber, latex, and other materials that deteriorate with the passage of time, I realized it was time to use them or throw them away,” Granberry went on. “So, in January of 2020 I decided to put them all in a movie together and see what would happen. There was no script and no storyboards; the puppets were simply laid out on a table and inspiration allowed to flow.”
The sense that someone with a flair for the darker side of fantasy has been playing with these characters and letting their imagination run wild comes across right from the start of this high contrast, flickering show of whimsy and macabre. Although apparently this look was not part of the initial concept.
“The garish color palette of the characters (who were never designed to go together) inspired the decision to proceed in black & white, which looked reminiscent of a 1930’s Ladislas Starevich animation. Following this germ of an idea, shots would be set up and animated, trying as much as possible to use filming techniques that mimicked those from the ’30s and ’40s. Shooting it became a four-year labor of love that was completed in February of 2024.
“Easily the biggest challenge was animating the puppets themselves, because they were made by me almost 20 years ago when I had no idea how to properly build a puppet. They had very limited range of motion and were constantly breaking. And there were so many, so keeping track of the big crowd scenes always kept me on my toes.”
For more on the production, see the bus images below:
