Oscar Shortlist Interviews: Directors Lucija Mrzljak And Morten Tšinakov Share Their Favorite Shot From ‘Eeva’ (Exclusive)

We invited the filmmakers behind each of this year’s 15 Oscar-shortlisted animated shorts to share their favorite shot from their film and explain why it’s special to them. The pieces are being published in the order that materials were received. Nomination voting begins today, January 11, and runs through January 16.

In this piece, directors Lucija Mrzljak and Morten Tšinakov discuss their short film Eeva, which premiered in competition at the Berlinale and later won the Alexeïeff – Parker Award at Annecy, best Croatian short at Zagreb, and best animated short at the Nashville Film Festival.

Without dialogue, Eeva unspools in the aftermath of a funeral as a widow adjusts to life on her own. Surrounded by mourners and having had too much to drink, she struggles to conform to how others believe a widow should mourn.

Below, Mrzljak and Tšinakov share their favorite shot from the film and tell us its significance:

This was the very first scene we made. Upon completing it we were very happy with how it looked like. It shows the general atmosphere for the first half of the film.

From that point we were excited to build on the rest of the scenes.

To develop the film’s aesthetic, we went through some old drawings that Lucija had made and thought that some of them suited the story very well. Lucija’s drawings are 100% hand-drawn and very detailed, though, and we would have needed a budget much bigger than what we had if we wanted to use them as they were, so we had to make some compromises.

Read the other entries in the series:

• John Musker on I’m Hip
• Flóra Anna Buda on 27
• Tal Kantor on Letter To a Pig
• Dave Mullins on War is Over!
• Bret Parker on Pete
• Yegane Moghaddam on Our Uniform
• Karni Arieli and Saul Freed on Wild Summon
• Rita Basulto on Humo
• Jared and Jerusha Hess on Ninety-Five Senses
• Stephen Vuillemin on A Kind Of Testament
• Gabriel Augerai, Romain Augier, and Yannick Jacquin on Boom
• Priit Tender on Dog Apartment
• Stéphanie Clément on Pachyderme
• Dan Abraham and Trent Correy on Once Upon a Studio