Solstice and the Stars: An Interview with Luke Angus

Of all the great many things only animation can do, one of the greatest is enlarging random objects to the point of absurdity. My mind immediately goes to Wilson Fisk in the Spider-Versemovies: that's a big man, sure, but that big? With that small a head? It's an out-there choice. And yet animation, through its very nature as a medium of the purest invention, of starting from blank, doesn't just allow eccentricity - it encourages it. I don't know anyone who wasn't scared when that big bald man smashed his hands down on someone's skull, regardless of whether his skeleton makes any logical sense. In fact, in the barrage of colour and motion, having one pillar that engulfs a frame becomes the bedrock that Spider-Man can swing through. How many kaijus have come from out of nowhere, when we least expect it, for seemingly no reason? No one is complaining, though. When Wile E. Coyote draws a perfectly lifelike image onto a brick wall in a matter of seconds, we are astounded. The size of it makes us believe. We'd run through it too.

That's the thing about Solstice, Luke Angus' latest short film about a lonely Inuit man desperate to see the person he misses most in the stars: what Angus enlarges when he makes the hood triple the size isn't just the hood, it's our belief in this man's loneliness. It's an emphasis on how small this man feels in his surroundings; something that, in live-actionwould look, well, stupid. In our interview, Angus said: 'When you're telling a story about loneliness, that precision really matters. The absence of things can be just as deliberate as what's present, and that control helps communicate the feeling clearly and honestly.' You'll see that when you watch his short, now available for just two weeks. Angus is a big fan of dead space, of letting his characters, in all of their round simplicity, sit in a deliberately empty frame. We saw that in 2021 with Alienated, another short film all about a lonely character trying to find their friend in the stars. He's pushed it even further here. For Angus, when there is no one around you, your only option is to look up.

Quite a depressing thought, at its core, and it's something Angus has been thinking about when making these stories. 'Whenever the story drifts into something more sombre, it's always followed by a lighter or more uplifting moment. These flashes of happiness reflect how grief actually works. Sadness is rarely constant. It ebbs and flows, interrupted by memories that can be painful but also comforting.' Solstice, by its very nature, is pure ebb and flow. The sun comes up; his lost love goes away. The moon is back; they have returned. It's a beautiful movie about flipping the traditional rules: in pure light, one struggles to remember, and in the darkness, one can't help but reminisce. Angus also builds in these wonderful flashback sequences that use the formal tools of old-school camcorder footage to help build levity. 'Those lighter moments don't undercut the emotion, they deepen it. By letting joy and tenderness exist alongside loss, the film feels more truthful and, hopefully, more bearable. The levity isn't there to distract from the sadness, but to remind us of why the loss hurts in the first place.'

The loss feels ever more palpable when the sun rises, and his love is nowhere to be found. His search becomes fretless. There's not much you can do when even the sky is running away from you. It's a strain that's run through the majority of Angus's work, even back to his first short, all the way back in university, Poa the Elephant. When asked about what it is about racing against time that speaks to him, he said: 'It's genuinely fascinating that you've drawn a connection between my very first film and my latest one. That's something I hadn't consciously realised until now, but it's definitely a thread that runs through a few of my other shorts as well. I think it comes from being drawn to stories where a character is up against it, racing against time. More specifically, I enjoy introducing a strong sense of urgency without immediately explaining why. There's something compelling about letting the audience piece that together for themselves. That mix of urgency, mystery, and forward momentum works especially well in short films, and it's a great way to hook the viewer right from the start.' The race here isn't so much about not finding the person - of course, the moon will rise again - it's about the desperation of waiting. Of needing someone so viscerally. Of being a small face in a hood, hiding from the world until they come back around.

The same could be said of the stories of Inuit cultures, which have not been told as often as they should. So often are they ignored, in fact, that a movie like this can come along and really drive a discussion about native Inuit filmmakers' ability to tell their own stories. When asked about how he went about researching the culture to create a story that felt honest to its roots, Angus said: 'In researching the film, one of the most interesting things I learned was just how much variety there is across Inuit communities. They span huge geographic areas, and their languages, customs, and daily lives can differ significantly depending on where they are. That really challenged the idea of there being a single, unified "Inuit culture." Rather than trying to absorb one definitive version, I looked at a wide range of references and perspectives, and thatbreadth was the most valuable takeaway. It highlighted how closely life, memory, and storytelling are tied to the land and the cycles of nature, which ended up influencing the tone and atmosphere of Solstice more than any specific cultural detail.' It's the perfect use for animation - tying a character to the nature around them in the most literal way.

As large as his characters and worlds are, Angus consistently keeps them slight. Now, twelve years into his career as an animator, we're continuing to see his evolution into something grander, and just as emotionally resilient. As the sun sets on Solstice, let's hope Luke Angus continues making mountains out of molehills in the dark.