AUSTRALIA · 2024 · R
Q&A with Director Adam Elliot, moderated by Leonard Maltin!
Celebrated Australian auteur Adam Elliot brings us his second ‘clayography’ feature, once again deftly blending his distinctive dark humor, expansive emotional worlds, and meticulous attention to detail. Clinching the Cristal Award for Best Feature Film at the 2024 Annecy Film Festival—making him the first director to receive this honor twice—Memoir of a Snail is an animated love letter to our younger selves and complicated families of all kinds, shining a light on the courage and fortitude it takes to emerge from our protective shells. Grace Pudel, pitch-perfectly voiced by Sarah Snook (Succession), is an endearing outsider, with a deep love for her cluttered collection of snail memorabilia, romance novels, and twin brother Gilbert. Life has never been easy for the Pudel family, who have been hit hard time and again by loss and misfortune. Despite loneliness and longing, Grace views her 1970s Australian world through a glass half-full and finds a lifeline connection with the irrepressible Pinkie, an octogenarian firecracker who adds spark and color to Grace’s otherwise beige existence.
A remarkable artistic feat eight years in the making, Memoir of a Snail is an entirely hand-crafted stop-motion tour de force. Heartbreaking, hilarious, and poignant, its knockout charm and genuine tenderness slide up on you faster than a family of gastropods, reminding us that while life might be understood by looking backward, it can only really be lived moving forward.