Descendents - Stunning Animated Short Starring Whoopi Goldberg

It isn’t often that an animation leaves me dumbstruck, but this one did the trick. Descendants is an extraordinary 14 minute animated short about the wish of attaining the unattainable and that out of every great evil some great good must come.

The protagonists are a pair of flowers (the older more experienced voiced by Whoopi Goldberg in full form and the younger by Christy Scott Cashman). They grow on the edge of a clearing next to one another. One wonders from the start whether there is some symbiotic connection between them.

One is aged and world-weary, made bitter by an unexplained backstory - the other one still youthful, vibrant and inquisitive. Providence has joined these two almost as one and it seems this is how it could continue, until one day a company comes to the clearing conveying something unanticipated to their lives.

This short film started as a diploma project by Heiko van der Scherm and Holger Schoenberger at the Institute of Animation (part of the Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg). It is a fascinating piece of animation – you can read about its history and how it was made here.