BoxBallet is a hand-drawn short that’s one of the 15 finalists for the upcoming Best Animated Short Film Academy Award. It’s about an unconventional relationship between a ballerina and a boxer. Will they fall in love and stay together amidst the pressures of their professions? Director Anton Dyakov explains why he had to tell this story. (This interview was conducted as an Email Q&A and was edited for clarity.)

Jackson Murphy: What fascinates you about ballet dancers and boxers?

Anton Dyakov: The time of realization in ballet and in boxing is very fleeting. The stakes are high… health and the risk of being unclaimed are at stake… and besides, personal life is usually also subject to professional implementation. A fight in the ring or a performance on a stage, this is just the tip of the iceberg, and we can only guess about the true price that people pay in the spotlight for the opportunity to be on this stage or ring. The desire to make this film stems from sympathy for these people, because in their destinies (not always successful) and those of many and many people in general — their aspirations and pain appears. It is easy to love the prosperous and successful, and sometimes it is not easy to accept a person in a difficult moment or at a turning point.

JM: They say “opposites attract”. How did you want to show that through the early scenes between Olga and Evgeny?

AD: The whole film is this attraction in the process of development. To be honest, I don’t think heroes are such opposites. On the contrary, I think they are very similar. Both face a difficult moral choice, and much of their lives depend on this choice. And the difference between them is only external: a lumpy thug and a fragile sophisticated dancer, this is only a form, but I still wanted to hint at the presence of something else under this shell, and this is something inherently homogeneous for both.

JM: What were the challenges of making the fast-paced boxing sequences (the boxers punching each other so quickly)?

AD: Believe me, the scenes of the massacre were not as complex as, for example, pieces of ballet dancing. Boxing is certainly not devoid of aesthetics, at its best, but it is also quite improvisational. Different fighters behave differently. Someone in the ring is an artist and a troll, someone is an uncompromising bandit and so on. And Classical ballet is a very tough canon, where any falsehood and mistake destroys all magic. The boxing scenes stand in contrast to rather calm, static scenes, so it was more important to emphasize the pressure of the dynamics, the cascade of punches, and snot to the sides.

JM: What were the difficulties in presenting the uncomfortable ballet director storyline?

AD: For the choreographer, the main task for me was meager means and literally in three scenes to show all his claims and desires. Well, the character’s plastic decision was also important. I didn’t think of it, I seemed to remember it. I have met a similar type more than once, and I just remembered him, so everything was pretty easy with this type.

JM: Why did you include a surprising visual reference to Mickey Mouse?

AD: Mickey is such a sign of a certain culture and values. And the heroes seem to live obviously in a different paradigm, and the story here is precisely in the fact that the love that shoots both heroes is a trigger that causes the transition of the heroes to a new quality. Well, such small details are important precisely for the visualization of this transit in the characters.

JM: You tell a very complete love story in 15 minutes. Were you pressured by length at all?; Do you think this could expand into a feature?

AD: This scenario has been implemented exactly as intended. I always follow the path as if not to do too much. Minimum means maximum expressiveness. Moreover, I had a sporting interest to bring the viewer to emotion, precisely by means of a short film. Many directors will tell you that this is not an easy task.

JM: Which romantic animated features and shorts inspired you to make BoxBallet?

AD: “La Joie de Vivre” (1934), a short directed by Anthony Gross and Hector Hoppin.

JM: What would an Academy Award nomination mean to you?

AD: This will mean that you have to run to the store for a bottle, but believe me, I’ll run after it anyway 😉