cinema Fontevraud-l'Abbaye

Barbara Rupik/

Director and screenwriter

Barbara Rupik (1992, Poland) is a director and screenwriter specialising in puppet and mixed media stop-motion animation.

She graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Katowice and the Polish National Film, Television and Theatre School in Lodz. Her short animation The Little Soul (2019) premiered at the 72nd Festival de Cannes, where it was awarded with the III Cinèfondation Prize. Later, it won the Animated Shorts Grand Jury Award and the CreativeFuture Innovation Award at Slamdance Film Festival. Her graduation short film Such Miracles Do Happen (2022) had its premiere at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival and received the Best Short Film Award at Riga IFF (2023) and the Golden Dove Award for the Best Animated Short Film at DOK Leipzig (2023), where it was acclaimed for using the outstanding technique of a liquid stop-motion. She is the author of the puppet animation in Agnieszka Smoczyńska's Silent Twins (2022).

Residency project:

“Cherub”

"The animation technique we want to use in Cherub is an unique stop-motion animation technique that combines puppet with painted animation, bringing to mind an animated assemblage or diorama. It is often referred to as wet stop-motion, since all the characters and objects, frame by frame, are covered with oil paint diluted with large amounts of oil, which allows for an extremely organic effect and makes the characters even more alive - sweating, crying, decomposing, drying up - like living tissue. Thanks to the use of oil paint, the plasticity of the image is extremely painterly and expressive. Combining all kinds of materials and textures, this technique opens up a wide field for the exploration of the visual aspects of the painting, allowing the search for innovative solutions."