Good Intentions | Award-Winning Stop-Motion Animated Short Film

In this small thriller about decision making and guilt, a young woman responsible for a car accident. She escapes the scene but can’t stop thinking, or imagining, what happened to the other driver. And soon strange things starts to happen…

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Good Intentions
Directed by Anna Mantzaris

"After blowing our woolly socks off with her craft in the warm and fuzzy But Milk is Important and making us cry with laughter in the darkly-comic Enough, fans of Anna Mantzaris will be happy to learn that this director’s talents continue to shine in her latest animated short Good Intentions. The eight-minute stop-motion, completed as her graduation film at the Royal College of Art, is a tale both laden with ominous atmosphere and disarming charm, all at once. It is also entirely consistent with Mantzaris’ homespun aesthetic, which persistently delights audiences and offers a two-fingered salute to the genre’s CGI contemporaries.

When a young woman causes a car accident and she flees the scene of the crime, her guilty conscience, over leaving the other driver behind, starts to eat away at her and she soon becomes a shadow of her former self. Good Intentions may first appear to be aimed at a younger audience, but don’t let the cutesy puppets and quirky set design fool you, this is a short filled with as much tension and mystery as you’d expect from any quality live-action thriller. If not more…

“Originally, I was interested in the concept of ghosts, if they can be more things than a dead person. Like if you can become a ghost of who you used to be, if someone can be a “living ghost”. And I was also curious about the idea of guilt and how it can sometimes be worse than the real action” – Mantzaris shared with S/W – “That’s how the idea started and I wrote it together with my boyfriend.”

I am a huge fan of Mantzaris’ work, and I must admit that after the huge success and mass appeal of her first two shorts, I was a little bit doubtful about whether she’d be able to rise to those great heights once again. Thankfully, I breathed a huge sigh of relief when I finished Good Intentions, because it was indeed as good, if not better, than I had hoped. Though that sigh might have also been provoked by the fact the short was so intense and at times downright scary, I watched almost the entire thing with bated breath.

Rather than being weighed down by the pressure of her success, Mantzaris seems to have used it as a leverage to take her craft and knack for dialogue-free storytelling to the next level. It’s as if she handpicked the best parts of her work thus far, and interweaved them together in Good Intentions – a method that has paid off in spades.

The director’s genius for production design comes to the fore (I imagine that having worked on Wes Anderson’s Isle of Dogs may have helped too). The sets are elaborate treasure troves, filled with enough Easter Eggs and tiny, quirky creations for Mantzaris’ fans to feast their eyes on, time and time again. There is also the intriguing oddity of delving into a very grownup issue, something we saw glimpses of in But Milk is Important, using the adorable lightheartedness of Enough and the perfectly imperfect puppets that have become the director’s signature.

It’s an oddity that in theory may be doomed to fall between the sensibilities of adults and children, yet Mantzaris has somehow managed to preserve and extend the innocence and enamour of her handiwork, and shaped it into something positively spooky. The result has its plush feet firmly grounded in the gloomy world of adulthood, with just the right amount of charm and imagination to pull at the heartstrings." - S/W Curator Serafima Serafimova

Director: Anna Mantzaris
Producer: Anna Mantzaris / Royal College of Art
Writers: Anna Mantzaris, Hugo Vieites Caamano
Cinematographer: Donna Wade
Scenography: Hetty Bax
Animation: Tim Allen, Anna Mantzaris, Quenting Haberham, Tobias Fouracre
Music: Phil Brookes
Sound: André Parklind
Post Production: Hugo Vieites Caamano

Reproduced on this channel with the permission of the filmmakers.

[sweetlover]

So here is the story for anyone confused. She indeed did die in that car crash. She just didn't realize it until the end. That is why the dog reacted that way to her whenever it saw her. Animals have a sense for the supernatural. She was in purgatory. She could not get out if purgatory until she fixed the thing that was plagueing her (fixing her sin) and riddled with guilt over potentially leaving a man to die she decided to check up on him. He sees her, realizing she died that day and he is seeing a ghost, and catches a heart attack from the shock. She tries to run away from him while he is dying(yet again( but is stopped by her conscious. She realizes this time the way to right her wrong was to stay with him. Not run away again. So she layed beside him.

[RevLeigh]

It is obvious by the many comments here that there is more than one way to view what happened. That is the beauty of the story.

[Wonder_WomansBaby]

The way I interpreted it was.... every time she tried to ignore or bury her guilt, she lost part of herself, a part of her soul, the part that made her human. Thats why she gradually started to fade. Why the motion sensor at the store no longer registered for her and the dog who at the beginning was very aggressive, became like he couldn't pick up her scent, good or bad. This short film is well executed. Very impressive!!

[arikira]

I think this short film portrayed how guilt will slowly devour you. In the comments, people say that she does in the car crash, but that’s not how I perceived it. I saw it as, she made the choice to not help the man. Her paranoia, guilt, and shame slowly started eating away at her.

[neverthesame]

These are puppets! And yet the emotions on all the character's faces were so well done, it was easy to empathize. It was also an important message about life and decision-making.

[vasatbey]

Anna Mantzaris. If you are reading this, you are a perfect film maker.

[RankinMsP]

The level of detail is extraordinary. Huge amount of work for the supermarket scene. Well done.

[danitho]

The news article on the phone at 5:41 says that there was a hit and run on the motorway. Not a fatal one. It has the photo of the man. That's it. They dont typically show dead bodies in the media.

With that, I dont think either of them died in the accident. I think she was experiencing guilt so bad, she felt like a ghost. She's shown stress eating but when the food doesn't go down easily, it's because her guilt has grown so much, it's no longer comforting.

She drops the coffee pot because she was distracted by her guilt. But she's alive. That's why she gets cut trying to pick it up.

It's why people look at her when she's walking around. She's behaving strangely. Bringing attention to herself. She just *feels* dead inside.

Her good intentions was sneaking into the building. She isn't actually floating through walls. It's a visual representation of her emotions.

When the man sees someone unexpectedly, he has a heart attack. Her first instinct is to run. But she isn't actually invisible. That's why she can't go through the walls. So she lies besides him, this time willing to endure the consequences.

There are some plot holes though. Like why didnt she help the man at the end. I think she probably left her phone at home, since she was trying to sneak around.

But this is the only explanation I can think of that makes sense with what we're seen in the story and the title.

[doggoe]

The way I see this, the woman already died in the car crash but she thought she was still alive. The man on the other hand, survived. The woman was guilty as she thought the MAN died, so the guilt eats away at her. Until she eventually decides to check up on the man. She drifts through the walls, indicating that she is a ghost.

At the man's office, she thought the man died while going to Hawaii. However, the man is indeed very much alive (but still hurt with the bandage on his forehead). He saw the woman-ghost, and nearly died a second time from a heart attack.

This time, the woman stayed with the man as she doesn't want to feel guilty after leaving him to die (for the second time, at that).

[markeiasteffipedron]

The woman thought the man died when she left him after the accident. Her conscience almost killed her. She tried to find the man. When she finally found him, the man had heart attack when he saw someone in his room. Her intention is good because she just want to check what happens to him but killed him unintentionally

[gail]

I didn't see any good intentions but only consequences of bad choices that cause slow death, perhaps to others as well as ourselves.

[tonysaldana]

No wonder it's a Award-Winning Stop-Motion Animated Short Film. It's pretty good

[REALBETTYBOO]

The grocery store items and setup are INCREDIBLE !!! WOW !!! 😍😍😍 !!!

[ingovanthiel]

Here is how I understood the story. She slows down at the stop sign but keeps driving, because she does not see him in time. He is speeding with his truck, slams in her small car and kills her. She is a confused ghost who mistakingly thinks she is still alive, and the one to blame, and flees the scene. The mix of numbness and shock on his face as he sits in his truck with his head injury could also be because he sees her dead. She returns to her home as a ghost but has visions of him, including the „hit and run“ news on her phone. Her own death slowly becomes more obvious as she slowly becomes invisible, and can walk through walls, but she still does not get it. Her physical control of the world gets less and less, like when the coffee pot just drops through her hands, even though the splinters still cut her and she can still use her laptop. When she finds him, it turns out he is the survivor and the one ridden with guilt. He thinks her ghost has come to haunt him, and he has a fatal heart attack. She understands for the first time that they are both dead/dying, and lies down next to him. The accident and its aftermath has doomed them both, but tragically connects them in death.

[sallyip]

The 她杀了他 (she killed him) neon store sign is a nice touch

[stephenrhodes]

theres still some things i dont really get. When she crashed into him and almost killed him it was UNINTENTIONAL. The second time, she INTENTIONALLY goes to see him, and then she kills him because he has a heart attack. I see the guilt as a theme, but is the story trying to say you can hurt someone intentionally AND unintentionally, but what matters is to do the right thing.
She hurts him worse the second time by checking up on him out of GUILT, but although it was intentional, she didnt mean to hurt him. Yet, she knew she had to stay there and do the right thing or she would still be haunted by her guilt.

[sailingkame]

Intricate art with the style, the gestures, and the details. Yet, disturbing theme: not sure how the “good intentions” title fits here. The first time she ran away instead of trying to help the man out of a car or at least calling for help… Then the second time she meets the man, he gets a heart attack because he saw a ghosts that was her… she attempted to run away again but the wall stopped her. Perhaps that means her conscience. Ok, a second chance to do the right thing… did she call for help? No. Did she try to help him? No. Did she at least try to console him? No. Being the ghost that scares him to begin with, what does she do? She gets closer to him, stares at him, and without a single attempt to amend her doing, she simply lies besides him. Seems to me as if she needed that for herself more than even considering the other person. This got stuck in my head pondering on how humans have become so self absorbed that things like accountability, respect, care and compassion become obsolete. She obviously doesn’t even feel those things for herself with the way she lives, how could she possibly feel that for others? So so heartbreaking and sad…. 😣😞

[owlthepirate]

This was amazing! Big round of applause, for all the tremendous, work that was put into this entire film! Great job everyone!

[bvyysqf]

did she work on The House?? the character designs and the general atmosphere remind me sooo much of the first story in that show! i hope so, she did really well with this!

[talionfrost]

I'll try break this down she did not die she is not a ghost its a representation of guilt and how she is in a moral scense not a real person shown as a metaphor. And ya he almost died as the car could have caught fire afterwords