Iulia Voitova’s Minute de gloire, started as an assignment at La Poudrière film school and also eventually ran as a teaser for the Ambivalence Theatre Festival of 2017.

“The exercise consisted of giving us a ready-made sound created by Laurence Williams,” Voitova told us. “We had to make a little animation to it, reflecting the city of Valence and the theater festival.” For this animator the music inspired, “a little story about a shooting star who becomes an actress at the Valence theater.”

The story is told in oil and paper for a uniquely textured, painterly look that was the result of what animators may call a happy accident: “In the beginning I wanted to draw animation under the camera using oil pastels,” Voitova said. “During the process, I realized that I was running out of time, we only had two weeks for the exercise. I decided eventually to add paper characters to speed up the process.

“Now this is one of my favorite techniques in animation, I’ve already made four animation short films (Le nuage, 2017, La plongeuse, 2018, 19, rue de Nevers, 2019, and Roads, 2021) in this technique and I’m working on the next one.”

For more on Voitova’s distinctive process, check out the behind-the-scenes images below: