Just in time for Father’s Day, here’s a sweet animated film Tend, about a father who becomes too focused on tending a fire, at the expense of his young daughter.
The creators are profiled over at WeTransfer, a presenter of the project:
From the start Tom and Ed wanted to make a personal film, and as both have young families, parenthood was always likely to play a part. In Tend, the father becomes preoccupied with the fire he keeps burning for his daughter. In doing so, he loses sight of the most important thing in his world, the daughter for whom he keeps the flames burning. It felt like a familiar story for two creatives who run a busy studio.
“There’s certainly a grain of irony there because I think this film has been pulling us away,” Ed laughs. “We’re definitely guilty of making the wrong decisions at times, but we wanted to cajole ourselves into being like – don’t push it too far or you might end up pulling your house apart and ripping your beard off.”
The beauty of the fire metaphor though is how open it is. Like a real fire, people all seem to see something different in Tend (early viewers have seen it as a story about addiction, mental health and tech amongst other things).