January 9th, 2024 
Jackson Murphy 
Flora Anna Buda is the director of 27, a 2024 Oscar shortlisted animated short about a 27-year-old woman trying to navigate life’s complications — what she experiences day to day and what she feels, emotionally, inside. Buda and I explore the short’s themes, which will likely resonate with some of this generation’s twentysomethings, in this Animation Scoop Q&A. (This email interview was edited for length and clarity.)
Jackson Murphy: Why did you want to make a short film that focuses on this specific age?
Flora Anna Buda: I feel like this age is particular and maybe one of the most vulnerable at least to my experience. It is really representing the frontier of adulthood where we need to compartmentalize and say goodbye to secondary pleasures that innocence and naivety gave us. It is the time to take responsibility and stand up for ourselves. Today is an especially difficult era for young adults to achieve an okay-enough life. There is not much support in developing countries for single people to create safety and a good base to start their own life. At least not where I grew up.
JM: What do you hope 27-year-olds find relatable about this story?
FAB: I want young adults especially from the lower middle/working class to feel seen and to feel encouraged to speak up and tell their own stories. I want to direct the spotlight of the future generation who are supposed to change the world for the better and to show how important it is to provide a stable environment to become capable of making those changes. There is a lot of shame around speaking up about financial issues and also around the topic of sexuality. It is hard to speak about it without being considered as victims or feeling being belittled, pitied or judged. I wanted to make a film where I show we are not alone with our ‘shameful’ problems. Becoming an adult – especially when you are living with your parents – is difficult. Most of us have cried ourselves to sleep at 2AM, devastated, drunk, halfway eating a cheap burger. This phenomenon is quite universal. It exists without the borders of our countries.
JM: Do you think people at this age are (generally) rebellious troublemakers or just misunderstood?
FAB: I think it is connected strongly to the fact that adults are living at home because of financial reasons and this can create a very adolescent-like state of mind. It is not about trouble making, but about trying to escape and find a mental state where you can feel free, and since it does not exist on a physical level many of us search for other ways to stimulate and reach this state.
JM: How did you want to present the conflicts of Alice feeling trapped vs. feeling free?
FAB: I wanted to create a strong contrast between her physical reality and her inner world where she escapes. I used the colors and the sound and the style of the dialogue and the writing to separate the two worlds.
JM: Is loneliness a serious problem with the young people of today?
FAB: I believe so. I don’t necessarily have a proper explanation for it but I definitely experienced loneliness at this time. Also after COVID happened it became more crucial for many of us regardless of age. During the confinement I really felt for the young adults and teens, especially those who started university or high school and would need socializing the most.
JM: There’s vibrancy and energy in many of the sequences. What did you enjoy about creating them?
FAB: Thanks for pointing this out, it is super nice to read you feel that way! I think the most enjoyable part was to create something very very honest, delicate and explicit without becoming vulgar. It is actually quite a fine line and I really enjoyed walking on that line. It was an exciting risk and I often felt terrified how the film will be seen once it is done. But at the same time it gave me a passionate energy… some sort of rebellious mood that was very genuine and I was only hoping it would show in the final result.
JM: What would an Academy Award nomination mean to you?
FAB: It would mean to me that the world is ready to see more independent animation, especially those that are not necessarily made for kids. It would mean that we are ready to see animated cinema of the everyday problems of the middle class and ready to empower and encourage each other to tell our own stories with no filter. I’m very happy to see quite many very strong independent short films produced by smaller studios on the shortlist, and I’m rooting for a nominee list that includes many of them!
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