thegry(at)posteo.net
5:45 min // Animated Shortfilm // 2019
Sincerely, Now Air
In an airplane, a surrounding where human error is not an option, flight attendants, decisively women are brought to embody flawless, authoritarian and at the same time highly empathic representants of human nature in order to create a fake-trust of comfort. If this facade crumbles, especially in a life treatening situation, there is no space for hesitation or caution.
In the shortfilm „Sincerely, Now Air“ a stewardess tries to bring a dying passenger back to life. Suddenly she has to deal with his death next to the requirements of her job. Hoping for a small withdrawl. Also the remaining passengers are thrown back to themselves weighing up over their little options for action.
Crew
by Theresa Grysczok
voice: Sofia Sheynkler
music: Franziska Dürmeier
sound: Eeva Ojanperä
additional animation & setbuilding: Daniel Maaß
compositing: Florian Maubach, Theresa Grysczok
color grading: Mikola Debik
2019
Festivals
Review
Sincerely, Now Air
Short Focus Magazine / Will Whitehead
"Sincerely, Now Air is a gorgeously animated stop-motion film about a mid- flight tragedy. Minimal in it's action, i utilises a strong sense of affect to display a lasting and impressively complex understanding of the strange and isolating emotions surrounding the experience of death. The film takes place entirely on a half-empty flight, in which a mostly unseen passenger is given CPR by a patient and unwavering flight attendant. After failing to resuscitate the passenger, the flight attendant is forced to carry on performing her duties. She offers everyone on the plane councelling in her official capacity as an employere on Now Air, but she sounds hollow and forced.
After having done so, she moves down the aeroplane and offers her carton of juice to a passenger version of herself, an act of self-forgiveness that feels profoundly vulnerable yet courageous. The first striking element of Sincerely, Now Air is its powerful sense of atmosphere. The half- empty cabin, its odd, artificial light, and the droning ambience of the score all combine to create an eerie, otherwordly air, which is incredibly befitting the circumstances.
The few passengers on the plane all feel irrevocably connected. Sharing the false liminal reality of the aeroplane. This sense of community is exacerbated by the undeniable role each person has in the act of resuscitation of the dying passenger. As the flight attendant compresses the passenger's chest, a small child squeezes her doll in rhythm with the compressions. The film cuts between the two and causing the viewer to see them as part of the same grander whole. This moment of tragedy is experienced equally by all involved, a shared trauma which bonds every single person, regardless of their prior relationship to one another.
Small, perfectly observed moments of truth populate Sincerely, Now Air, moments which could easily be forgotten in a medium such as stop-motion. As the flight attendant stands up after he failed resuscitation attempt, she pushes her glasses up, and we remember that this is not the climax of an epic action movie but simply a person trying her best to maintain composure in an awful situation. Her gift of a juice carton to herself is not a grand gesture and will obviously not resolve the trauma of the experience but is so genuine and simple that its emotional impact is far greater than any huge sentimental climax. Sincerely, Now Air excels in this kind of simplicity, representing an unsentimental and beautifully human response to tragedy."