The Girl with the Occupied Eyes

A girl wanders around the city, countryside, and beach, always clutching a phone which she never takes her eyes off. Along the way, she comes across a group of characters that include a bear, dolphins, pirates, and an alien. Everyone tries to captivate her and draw her attention, but she is indifferent to everything around her. After a series of adventures that include a brief space trip, the girl lands in a circus and climbs up a roller coaster. What no one expected was that, during the dizzying journey, the phone would slip out of her hands, only to fall apart on the ground. Sadness soon sets in, but won’t stay for long. After all, with her eyes freed, the girl only has to gain: she can finally pay attention to the world around her and join those who are calling her to play.

Director’s statement
The film is based on a book, written and illustrated by the director in 2020, after feeling the need to talk with his 4-year-old daughter about the use of technology. The story is meant to illustrate the limits to technological immersion, exposing the consequences of prolonged use. The situations the girl finds herself in are common to any child. The tension when the girl turns away from the experiences that she would like to have and that she might be looking for inside her phone, is what children will recognize as absurd. The book’s success shows parents’ need to have the same dialogue with their children, a generation unaware of a world unfiltered by social media. Visually speaking, traditional techniques and digital compositing will be combined, intending to create an animated watercolour. In the end, we will have the feeling of having watched the painting and animation of a movie in real time - a world that only existed because it was hand painted at that very moment.