9 Million Colors

For the beautiful mantis shrimp, Fran, the ocean is the garden of Eden. Her murderous claws can take anything she fancies. For the blind and hideous fish, Milva, every day is about escaping and fighting for life. Only Fran sees the underdog Milva as gorgeous and tries anything to make her see the beauty and joy around her. The love is mutual, but not the perception of the world around. Even though Fran’s sharp claws are able to obtain eyes for blind Milva and bring down the walls of their previous lonerism, they still need to fight their differences to find a way to stay together. Maybe singing will help?

Director’s statement
Our goal is to create a unique stop-motion in terms of playing with gender and pushing the visual aspect of classical puppet animation to the new level, whilst telling a story that explores relationships and how we perceive the world. The sea is still pretty much undiscovered and, to our ears, mostly silent. I have chosen the musical for turning this notion upside down. Yet we are still playing with the facts, that we are truly under the water, so we won't be able to hear any words of our singing actors clearly, but instead we will hear mostly bubbles, in tune with the music. Regarding the visual aspect, we are trying to create an image that has not been created ever before. In the movie, apart from the camera angle, there will be multiple POV of the sea critters, like crabs that see in B&W, or fish that have a limited color palette. But the most important POV is of the main heroine - a peacock mantis shrimp. She has 16 photoreceptors in her eyes (we have 3), she can see colors we can't even imagine.