WHAT IT’S ABOUT: A daughter tends to her father on his deathbed, while thinking back to the times he hurt her feelings: can the two break the barrier of repressed emotion before it’s too late?

WHO MADE IT: Born in Tajikistan, Daria Kascheeva moved to Russia with her family during the civil war. A sound engineer by profession, she became interested in animation and moved to the Czech Republic to study it. She made “Daughter” as her graduation project from FAMU, Prague’s legendary film school, which includes Vêra Chytilová and Miloš Forman among its graduates. Her husband and frequent collaborator Alexander Kashcheev, an actor-turned-editor and a dedicated extended team helped realize this stop-motion puppet animation, which is nominated for the 2020 Oscar’s animation short.

WHY YOU NEED TO WATCH: “Daughter” is an exploration of a relationship between a girl and her dad that is rich with generational misunderstandings, childhood malleability, and heartbreaking tenderness. When the death of a loved one approaches, a shared is history is put to the scrutiny, and past wounds may not stand the test of time. Using mesmerizing papier-mache puppets and an elaborate stop-motion technique that she painstakingly perfected, Kascheeva created a universally appealing and absolutely devastating animation that stays with you long after the end credits roll.

Daughter (Dcera), 2019

Available on Vimeo