Papa is an amazing short film by Natalie Labarre. An inventor realizes he’s not a great dad so he decides to invent a better one. About the filmmaker:
Natalie Labarre is a Franco-American animation artist native to NYC. At the end of her studies at the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan, she received a BFA in Traditional Animation and went on to produce her first short film, Papa (14), which has screened at several film festivals around the world, including Anima Mundi (Brazil), Seoul International Cartoon and Animation Festival (Korea) and KLIK! (Netherlands).
Inspiration
In making the film, Labarre dug into her own personal experience:
“I wanted to make a film that helped explain the complicated but super close relationship I have with my dad and the compromises we learned to make for each other, especially since at the time he didn’t respect animation and wished I were a painter instead.”
Labarre humorously confided to Short of the Week that her father still doesn’t like the film.
Currently, Labarre works as a 2D artist, and is going to convert her film to a children’s story book. It was recently acquired by MoMA’s department of education for its ongoing film series, targeted at families with children aged 4-10, designed to introduce kids to the world of film.