Rob Munday

As a man approaching his fifties who has been in the same relationship for nearly half of his life, I find it increasingly difficult to recall what it feels like to experience a crush. Which is why films like Zhen Li’s Fur serve as a valuable reminder. This surreal animated short captures the intensity of those emotions – and the ways in which they can curdle or fester when left unexpressed – with a raw authenticity. While it may not transport every viewer directly back to their own personal infatuations, it is nevertheless deeply evocative, operating more through sensation than recollection.

A hand-drawn animation rendered in charcoal pencil on paper, Fur screened at both Annecy and Sundance and introduces its central emotional premise with deceptive simplicity: a young student makes eye contact with a classmate. Although this moment initially suggests a familiar narrative of adolescent attraction, what unfolds over the ensuing six minutes defies expectation, pushing steadily toward something far stranger and more unsettling.

“That clumsy, mistake-exposing quality felt very close to the feeling of having a crush,” Li discussing the hand-drawn aesthetic of her short.

“I wanted to capture the guttural, visceral, and intense feeling of having a crush,” Li explains during our discussion of the film. She goes on to note that she deliberately chose a hand-drawn aesthetic for its “clumsy, mistake-exposing quality,” which she felt mirrored the physical and emotional responses that arise when one is overwhelmed by attraction. To further externalise this internal state, Li incorporated live-action time-lapse footage of decaying objects, a visual metaphor for emotions “growing mold” as a result of being “held inside for too long.”

Fur’s articulation of its themes is undoubtedly unconventional, and its storytelling may prove too abstract for viewers seeking clearer narrative cohesion. Yet the emotions it explores are fundamentally universal, and anyone who has experienced a crush at any point in their life is likely to find something recognizable within it. From a filmmaking perspective, Li’s distinctive and memorable approach exemplifies the kind of bold, challenging work we are always keen to champion on SotW.