An Ostrich Told Me the World Is Fake (2022)

An Ostrich Told Me the World Is Fake Review

An Ostrich Told Me the World Is Fake is a 2022 Australian animated short film directed by Lachlan Pendragon. It’s a creative Oscar nominee.

A mysterious talking ostrich helps an office worker in need uncover the flaws in his stop-motion universe. Australians are some of the best when it comes to stop-motion and this movie proves that once again. The puppetry is superb here and the mixing of live-action and animation worked wonders to make the movie more unique. What is particularly creative in this story is how the postmodernist narrative was heightened through the small quirks that only stop-motion can offer with the best and most memorable example being the mouthpieces of the characters falling apart.

The finale was powerful in its twists and turns while the suspenseful, ominous tone made the movie quite intense. The eeriness is particularly palpable in the first half. My biggest issue plotwise is the choice to reveal so early on that these puppets are controlled. The fact that we see the action happening on the screen from the beginning made the story much less ambiguous and mysterious. It was just too postmodernist for my personal taste.

An Ostrich Told Me the World Is Fake is wonderfully animated and quite eerie in its tone, but it should have been more mysterious at the end of the day.

My Rating – 4