Numbering over 30,000 attendees, the 44th edition of Anima, the Brussels International Animation Film Festival (28 February–9 March), boasted its own festival Queer Night as well as a dedicated Queer Stories block, a pride (no pun intended) and joy of the event as highlighted by Anima co-director Karin Vandenrydt in an interview with Purple Hour. Granted: many of the queer films that have made to the festival are likely to have appeared elsewhere, but that simply means that we’re just the next to enjoy this cream of the crop. Here, we highlight three LGBTQIA+ shorts that screened at Anima 2025 that have garnered critical and audience attention—for good reason.
The most obvious place to start is the stop-motion puppet animation Carrotica (2024) by Daniel Sterlin-Altman, which began its festival run nearly one year ago at 2024 Filmfest Dresden, a festival dedicated to short films. There, it scooped the Golden Horseman for Animated Film – National Competition, the festival’s top award in that respective section. It went on to dominate a slew of other festivals, also in the student category, given that Sterlin-Altman created the film as the concluding project for his master’s degree at Potsdam’s Filmuniversität Babelsberg Konrad Wolf. The director plays once again with his beloved theme of carrots, which fits the sexual innuendo of the story like a glove.
16-year-old Nadav (voiced by Sterlin-Altman) and his single mother Shari (Summer Banks) indulge in their respective fantasies: the former dreams of having sex with his track coach as he writes explicit gay erotica, while Shari, a botanist, imagines making out with an attractive, life-sized woman-coded carrot. Separated by their respective senses of loneliness, mother and son gradually come together through a series of slightly unfortunate events, set off by a comedic but spicy song written by Sterlin-Altman called “I Love My Husband”, written in the style of an old-timey tune. It’s steamy, it’s ridiculous, and Sterlin-Altman’s claymation puppet style adds further humour to it all through so-called “crude” facial expressions. Who wouldn’t be enticed by a carrot splayed out on a pool chair, its leafy stem falling seductively like luscious hair?
‘Carrotica’ by Daniel Sterlin-Altman
Violette Delvoye’s Belgian-French short The Mud Under My Window (2025, Sous ma fenêtre, la boue) enjoyed its international premiere in the 2025 Berlinale Generation 14plus section before moving on to Anima, where it won the top prize for Best Belgian Short Film in Anima’s national competition. The filmmaker dedicates the film to her parents and child in the first moments of the work, already laying the groundwork for the piece’s themes. We meet early-teen Emma as she listens to hip-hop music and doodles, the rain falling in a dreary but repetitive pitter-patter outside. She lives at the home of one of her mothers, whom she calls Mamou, while she yearns for the presence of her other mother, Maman. We learn through a phone call that the former has custody of Emma, while the latter is in a mental health rehabilitation centre. Whether out of adolescent age or actual distance from her parents, our young protagonist is perpetually distraught and her eyes narrowed in disappointment, finding fault in Mamou’s engagement with her new paramour David and feeling frustrated that Maman isn’t around.
Delvoye plays out what is undoubtedly a recognisable scene for most people: a hostile encounter with a parent or loved one, derived from external emotions that one can’t help but let bubble up and explode. We might gasp along with Emma at perhaps the film’s most egregious moment as seen from her view: a quiet but shocking gesture when Mamou absentmindedly flips over one of the girl’s sketches to write down details from her phone call. Taking place entirely in the home and mostly between Emma and Mamou, The Mud Under My Window is bathed entirely in a blue-grey colour palette save for a particular splash of orange near the film’s end. The characters and settings are set in a simply drawn style, almost as if taken from the pages of Emma’s own sketchbook, with a symbolic “charcoal-smudging” effect creating texture in the film’s monochromatic scenes. The film’s 12 minutes are brief and leave plenty to speculate upon; one might even wonder why there isn’t more to the story. But Delvoye’s work intends to capture an exemplar moment that can be read many different ways, depending on one’s character identification. However, one thing remains certain as encapsulated by the film’s sad but realistic final shot as Mamou and Emma move from sharing a window to each looking out of separate windows, distanced by a large and seemingly unbridgeable gap.
‘Gigi’ by Cynthia Calvi
The touching Gigi (2023) by Cynthia Calvi is one amongst a group of recent animated documentaries that have used its form to great effect. The short was nominated for the 2025 César for Best Animated Short Film alongside another very powerful queer animated documentary, Maurice’s Bar by Tom Prezman and Tzor Edery. The story was inspired by a testimony by Gigi recorded in 2017, which plays throughout the film as a loose narration. Calvi uses a simple but effective device, showing the titular trans character’s dysphoria through the metaphor of a mermaid growing into a human.
The young Gigi begins as a literal fish out of water and grows into a woman, experiencing vast changes in her body as she moves to Paris and seeks to break out of the cisheteronormative societal shell in which she is placed. As if to avoid bending to the stereotype of overly colourful queerness, Calvi uses earth tones throughout all of Gigi’s journey as a trans child discovering themselves: greens, greys, and tans create an easily unified palette. The 2D style is simple but vibrant, often using different types of geometries and background details to fill the screen. The animator notably portrays Gigi with huge, almond-shaped eyes, reflecting our protagonist’s uniqueness and naïveté (accompanied by joyous laughter from the real Gigi). Through constant movement and narration that pushes us to stay attentive until the film’s end, Gigi retains a uniquely joyous feel despite starting in a dark and oppressive place for our heroine.
