Thesis title: How to Visualise Power Dynamics and Alienation in Urban Spaces Through Animation Documentary ?
Animation documentary | Genre: Social Issue Length: 5.30 min
Written and directed by: Sara Saffari
''It is all about space not over the skys but on the ground''
I developed this film as part of the Re:Anima Joint Master’s Degree Program in Animation (www.reanima.eu). Over the course of two years, I traveled and studied across Portugal, Belgium, and Finland, undertaking both artistic creation and research.
The film is inspired by the story of Mohamed Bouazizi — a Tunisian hawker whose self-immolation in 2011 sparked the Arab Spring movement. Throughout this work, I visualized the vulnerabilities of lower-class communities who face structural violence under urban control policies and bureaucratic systems. This Film stands as a protest by itself and Its primary goal is to raise awareness and provoke thoughts.
How Much for How Many
Animation experiments
I created this test before finalizing the visual design for my film. At the time, I didn’t have a specific goal in mind—I simply wanted to explore a theme that interested me: experimenting with geometric shapes, animation, letters, and poetry, all of which were conceptually tied to my film. However, this test ended up having a significant influence on the project. It inspired me to incorporate measurements into the background design, which became a key visual element in the final film.
A measured hassle
1.
Alienation
2.
In this test, I already understood how to portray alienation and deconstruction statically, but I wasn’t sure how to approach the animation process for it. Therefore, I created this piece, which helped me develop my approach for the rest of the animation process.
Animating
Character design
The idea of manifesting alienation in my artwork dates back two years, when I was not yet familiar with the theoretical framework of this experience. At that time, I was inspired by the French poet Charles Baudelaire, which led me to create a painting based on one of his texts, Loss of Halo. In his text, a sentence such as "my halo slipped off my head and onto the filthy ground" inspired me to visualize the scene from my own perspective.
Oil color on canvas
Many workers experience a sense of dehumanization and estrangement from life under the exploitative structure of capitalist society (Kalekin-Fishman & Langman, 2015). In the 1840s, the German philosopher Karl Marx described this feeling of separation from life as “Alienation.” I have explored this concept in my films, developing a distinct visual style through character design. In moments when a character experiences pain, their face distorts into geometric shapes. This visual distortion reflects the psychological weight of pain and suffering, and how these inner struggles can manifest physically.
Researching visual methods to embody alienation in character design:
Environment design
Real life references
Production Process / Mono-print
Around half of my film is created using monoprint, a printmaking technique with a painterly quality where no two prints can ever be exactly the same. There are various approaches to monoprint, which two of them are more common and have a faster printing process. The first version is trace monoprint: in this path the ink is applied on the glass, then the paper is placed over the ink and the image is drawn on the paper. When we flip the paper, we see the painted version of the drawing on the other side. In the second version, the painting is done with the colors on the glass and then the paper is placed over the painting to make the print. In my film I combined both of these approaches.
