One of the reasons that I’ve been glad to start Galactic Rambler is that I knew it would help me to watch more of the “shorts” that have been released over the last number of years that I never got a chance to enjoy.

I love the idea of the Pixar SparkShorts. It allows the various animators the ability to make a short from their own personal inspirations and not be “held back” by someone else’s story (no matter how great that story is).

The newest one is “Self” from Searit Kahsay Huluf. It follows a wooden doll who begins “improving” parts of herself to fit in with her new surroundings, before realizing that she’s changed so much of who she is and is no longer herself.

Huluf spoke with Blavity about the piece:

“If you watch a lot of Pixar films there’s always a mother-daughter or like a brother or friends. This was really about one’s relationship with themselves and how they see themselves in the world. So that was part of it and the other part was talking about the immigrant experience too. We don’t have it blatantly saying she’s an immigrant in the film, mainly because there’s not any dialogue in it, but when you look at her design she does have African markings. She has the cross, the two elevens on the side of her eye, which means she’s from the Tigray region of Ethiopia. She has three kinds of carvings on her neck as well. I wanted to tell a story about an immigrant experience of coming to an urban city and the struggles of belonging and also directly indirectly being forced to conform.”

You should 100% check it out on Disney+ when you can.