Rob Munday

In one way or another, whether you’re a city dweller or country folk, we’re all connected to nature. Looking to explore the relationship between humanity and the environment in which we live, Ivana Bosnjak Volda and Thomas Johnson Volda’s mesmerising short film Udahnut zivot (Imbued Life) follows a woman with a particular flair for taxidermy, who finds her quest to return her creations to the wild derailed after she starts to discover something surprising within the animals.

For a film centred around taxidermy, it feels apt that the main quality I admired in Imbued Life was its stillness. By that, I don’t mean a lack of movement from the camera or characters (although there is a bit of that on show here), but the overriding sense of calm and patience that bleeds from every sequence, even when the short is at its most strange and haunting. 

A prime example of this is Imbued Life’s opening shot – five human figures, with animal heads, sitting on a boat in the middle of the lake. It’s instantly unsettling, but also serene and beautiful. With very little happening for the first 30 seconds, even when they turn their heads and look straight at us we’re as transfixed and intrigued as we are unnerved. It’s the kind of slow exposition we usually recommend as being more suited to the theatrical environment than online, but with Imbued Life it works.

The opening shot of Imbued Life is equal parts strange and serene

Introducing us, somewhat abstractly, to the themes of the film, this opening shot also establishes the short’s distinct tone and production. The two very much go hand in hand, as although the subject matter plays a part in setting the mood, it’s the filmmaking that does a lot of the work in truly capturing it, with the ominous, minimalist score, life-like puppets, and foggy environments all playing their part.

From this point on things only get stranger and although, at times, Imbued Life feels like it could slip into the realms of horror filmmaking, again there’s something grounded and thoughtful about where the story goes. It could have easily been played for shocks, but this wasn’t what the directorial duo was aiming for, as they explained to S/W when discussing their motivation, “We wanted to make a film which would encourage the audience to reflect about the topic of consciousness in the natural world and hopefully feel more empathetic towards it.”

Keen to point out that “no animals were harmed for the production”, although Imbued Life orbits themes of death and isolation – the filmmakers admit to having an interest in exploring “the borders between the animate and inanimate, living and dead” in their work— this isn’t a short that leaves you feeling morbid and morose. In fact, there’s an inherent beauty to the filmmaking and storytelling here that is both exciting and gratifying. If you love stop-motion as much as I do, you won’t feel anything but joy watching this short.

Part of the Bonobostudio catalogue, Imbued Life had an impressive festival run, playing the likes of Annecy and Clermont-Ferrand. Ivana Bosnjak Volda and Thomas Johnson Volda’s latest short film, Remember How I Used to Ride a White Horse, is also now on the festival circuit, having premiered at Ottawa in late 2022.