Blackheads
Under 10 Minutes
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7m 46s
A young woman copes with heartbreak, blackheads, and bad therapy. Emily Ann Hoffman directs “Blackheads,” a study on relationships and gender roles, melding stop motion and 2D animation with a nuanced sense of realism. Sofia has just broken up with her boyfriend and she’s struggling with anxiety and questions of what went wrong. On a phone call with her little sister’s therapist — a child psychologist, who she resorts to speaking with in lieu of finding her own — she is surprised and frustrated by the therapist’s retrograde worldview, like that women ask too much of men. (“Is this how she talks about gender roles with kids?”). She dreams of a partnership that’s affectionate and present, while debating a more immediate concern: whether or not to pop a blackhead on her nose. This is the third short from Hoffman we’ve featured in the last two years (after “Bug Bite” earlier this year, and “Nevada,” which made our 2019 Short Films of The Year List) and each is complex and funny and human.
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