awkward

A day full of socially awkward moments.

In this film, I aimed to highlight the everyday social awkwardness people encounter, adding a layer of embarrassment and a dash of absurdity.

4 mins | USA | 2020
production: self-produced
direction, animation: Nata Metlukh
sound, music: Daruma Audio

story

My films often start with a series of disconnected episodes that eventually come together to form a story. I had a collection of awkward moments for quite some time, but I struggled to find a cohesive plot.

I realized it might still work without a central idea, as long as there was a clear narrative structure. To guide this, I established three rules:

Everything takes place over the course of a single day, with events unfolding from early morning until midnight.
The same two characters appear at the beginning, middle, and end, with their awkwardness evolving throughout.
In the climactic scene at a birthday party, all the characters come together.

All the awkward moments in the film are based on real-life experiences, with absurd twists added.

For example, the story of a car covered in post-it notes for parking in a disabled spot is real—I just imagined what would happen if the driver actually were disabled.

I once saw two blind men walking energetically down the street until they collided. In reality, they didn’t annihilate though.