Thursday is Shorts Night, so we have a lot of directors to talk to. The German directing sisters Kirsten Carina en Ines Christine Geisser, known together as “kiin.”, tel lus about their horsey animation Lucky.

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What inspired you to make Lucky? Do you like horses a lot?
Ines Christine: “Not really, but I don’t have anything against them. We just don’t connect. I don’t feel very attracted to animals in general; we don’t have a good communication basis.”
Kirsten Carina: “I was one of those horse loving teenage girls in my past. The girl in the film is actually me at that time. We referenced some girly horse magazines that I kept from this time and I’m quite experienced in drawing horses surrounded by hearts! But I actually don’t like horses a lot today. I think they are a bit spooky.”
Ines Christine: “She was actually bitten by a horse named Lucky, leaving her with a scar she considered as ugly during her late teenage years. But the film was also inspired by a lot of other elements, for instance more recent trips to Las Vegas and Iceland. In the film, Lucky is looking for happiness. Horses are in many ways symbols for luck, fortune, happiness – the classical horseshoe is just one example. We’re playing with these well-known images, but in the end Lucky might not be about horses at all.”

Why did you chose this particular animation style?
Kirsten Carina: “As I did most of the drawing part, it was quite important to actually feel the emotions we wanted to express in the moment of drawing. We rarely redo any drawings so you get the unfiltered emotions on the screen.”
Ines Christine: “The film is structured in different sequences that are connected and build on each other. Every sequence is drawn with different material (such as pencils, crayons, felt tip pens, ink) that supports the storyline.”
Kirsten Carina: “When it comes to the style most decisions were made quite intuitively. This kept the drawing process exciting; my drawings often even surprised myself. Especially when I see them moving in the end.”

Is your film also a commentary on how we treat animals?
Ines Christine: “I guess you can see it this way although it isn’t exactly what we intended. It started with the story of a girl getting bitten by a horse, trying to explore why the horse got so nasty in the first place. We heard a lot of very different interpretations of the film which is exactly what we hoped for since we don’t follow a classical storyline and leave things open for interpretation and self-reflection.”