By Kayvan Kaboli
The animated short In the Shadow of the Cypress, directed by Shirin Sohani and Hossein Molayemi, won this year’s Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film. With its minimalist visual style and simple yet expressive line work, the film tells a deeply moving and allegorical story.
At its heart, the film explores the lingering trauma of a father who carries the scars of war. His past weighs heavily on him, manifesting in sudden breakdowns, destructive outbursts, and self-inflicted harm. Meanwhile, his daughter, despite her love for him, reaches a breaking point. She can no longer bear their life together and prepares to leave home.
Just as she is about to depart, she encounters a stranded whale on the shore. From that moment on, she and her father devote themselves entirely to saving the creature, struggling to return it to the sea where it belongs.
Over its 20-minute runtime, this beautifully crafted animation presents a striking visual world: a small, isolated house by the shore, where the father and daughter live alone; a massive whale trapped on the sand; and a half-sunken ship, revealed through flashbacks to be a remnant of war.
The stranded whale serves as a powerful metaphor for society—or, more broadly, the environment—left helpless and unable to survive. Small, well-intentioned efforts, like digging around it with shovels or trying to tow it into the water with a small motorboat, prove futile. These efforts only leave the whale vulnerable to scavenging seagulls, symbolizing a slow and inevitable demise.
The half-sunken ship represents a broken governing system, incapable of repair. The father, clinging to hope, dreams of repainting it, just as his daughter attempts to shield the whale from the heat with wet cloths—both gestures tragically inadequate.
In the end, only one path remains: the ship must fully sink to the ocean floor (symbolizing the collapse of the government) for the whale (society and the environment) to have a chance at survival. In a final act of sacrifice, the father ensures this happens, choosing to give up his own life so that his daughter can stay in their homeland and build a future.
