Locked up in her tiny house, the young Indo-American Amina who lives in a big city tries to work trapped in the four walls of her apartment, sitting for hours in front of her computer.
When at some point she sinks into her thoughts and the pressures that adult life reserves for her, then unexpected and unprecedented things happen inside her house, with Amina facing invisible enemies and personal demons. This is how the script of the short animated film, “Mine” by Daphne Xourafi, which won the award for best animated film at the Cannes – World film festival, could be described. Through the eight-minute animated film, 28-year-old Daphne Xourafi chooses to talk about the mental health issues that people are called upon to manage, especially when they are forced to be confined in their home, but in the end sends an optimistic message about how they can be addressed.
“Based on this image, I wanted to make a film that talks about mental health in general, about what it’s like to feel trapped in your head, which can happen either if you have mental health issues, or because of loneliness, or because of work. , or because of our way of life. I wanted to show you what it’s like to build a prison in your head on your own and not understand that this thing is bogging you down, until it’s too late. This was the first idea for the film. “I was inspired by my own struggles on this issue but also by the struggles of my friends, and specifically of a friend of mine who lives in America”, Ms. Xourafi explains to the Athenian-Macedonian News Agency.
Working for at least 12 hours a day until the end of her film, Ms. Xourafi, as time went on, had completely taken the place of the protagonist, living essentially the very script she had written.
The journey of “Mine” began about 2 years ago, when Ms. Xourafi’s proposal was one of the winners of the Special Program for the Support of the Cinema Community by the Hellenic Cinema Center and the Ministry of Culture, but then changed the script of her film while maintaining but at the heart of people’s mental health. “I made the film myself, I had to say no to work and live on very little money to be able to make it and the funding helped me a lot, without it the film could not have been made,” he told APE-MPE. Mrs. Xourafi.
Making stories as a child, writing and painting anything that made her heart beat faster, fascinated by the greatest cartoonists and inspired by the power of a good story that can make the world a better place, Daphne Xourafi even though she graduated from the department Communication and Media of the University of Athens decided not to use paper and pencil to write articles but to paint. So after her studies and after realizing that she did not want to follow the path of journalism, she made her own comic and took part in Comicdom, the comic festival festival that takes place in the country. Shortly afterwards, she began her postgraduate studies in animation at Dundee University, and when she returned to Athens, she created cartoons, storyboards and illustrations for clients such as Google, the Acropolis Museum, the City of Athens, and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. refugees.
“Animation in Greece is largely limited to the advertising part, to the commercial part. What saddens me and I think can change is that I see many children have the same dreams that I had and feel that they have no way to make them come true, they have no way to make their living by animating and they will be limited to one piece. that they may not like to survive. Most Greek animators are self-taught. We are hard to find, rare and we have to shine just because we are few and because we learn this art on our own. We are giving a big fight as if one wants to make an animation film one must find funding. In other words, he needs money and time and does not do anything else, does not need to make a living at the same time, in order to be able to dedicate himself to his film, unless of course he is surrounded by a group of 20 people “, he explains.
Having as a model and admiring Hayao Miyazaki, Sylvain Chomet, Satoshi Kon but also the Disney cartoons of the 90’s, Ms. Xourafi believes that animation can break the form and highlight the psyche of a person with a more surreal way.
“You will do animation to completely break the form because you make worlds from scratch, you can tell stories without limiting yourself, enter the human psyche and create stories from there.
“You can bring to life any world you can imagine and that is a way of telling stories from the other side,” he notes.
It is noted that the film won the award for best animation film for the month of December and got the ticket to compete for the best animation film of the year. The other contributors were: Music – Haris Katsilis, Sound Paul Drauz-Brown and Supervising: Stefanos Pletsis.
You can watch videos from “Mine”, here.
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