Night Thoughts

I just finished working on this short piece, based on the short story 'Night Thoughts' by Helen Simpson, for the new issue of Granta Magazine. The story is about a man who cannot sleep at night, as he is being tortured by all the thoughts about his marriage.




Design and direction: Marie-Margaux Tsakiri-Scanatovits
Animation: Soyoung Hyun
Commissioned by: Michael Salu at Granta magazine.

Comment by Natalie Wilson on Ms.Blog magazine:

Greek-Italian filmmaker Marie-Margaux Tsakiri-Scanatovits puts us inside the mind of the male narrator, showing how he feels his wife Ella crushes his heart in her hand while stabbing him in the back. Yet he still longs for connection with her, imagining her naked body one minute and being reminded of her constant badgering of him the next. These “night thoughts,” both in the story and in the animated short, offer an illuminating reversal of life as we know it, suggesting that “matriarchy” would be no better than “patriarchy”–that a binary reversal is not what we should be seeking, but rather an explosion of the night/day, male/female system altogether.