Keyword Futility

A squirrel in a downtown park lugs a giant coconut back home, but nothing he tries will crack it open.

Man and boy play a futile game of chess in the middle of nowhere. An internal struggle between what is and what can no longer be.

This animated short by Claude Cloutier is a pictorial account of an attack on Canadian soldiers during WWI. On the edge of the battlefield, recruits are dreading the order to attack. At the signal, a young soldier leaps into a hell of fire and blood where the earth engulfs both the living and the dead. Blending archival images and Cloutier’s hypnotizing brushstroke, the film is a dazzling illustration of the futility of war.

When an outrageously absurd event results in the world having only 2 hours left before nuclear annihilation, a group of amateur student filmmakers decide to make one last film to consecrate human existence.