Lima

Three years in the making, Lima is an exquisitely beautiful piece of stop motion animation - the kind of film that will shape your dreams. Set in a remote landscape under a deep blue sky, it's a poignant tale of father and son, love, loss and memory.

With no dialogue, there are multiple ways the film might be interpreted, yet it's relatively simple to follow the story of Lima from childhood days spent with his father through to the old man's death and on into his own old age. Together they caught fireflies and watched them spiral upward to blend with the heavens, seeming to become stars. Together they walked along mountain paths that now feel lonely, and we feel the weight of that loneliness, especially when we follow Lima into his tiny shack and see him sit down beside his heater, left with very little. But there are animal visitors and strange sights in this place, and the moon is huge. It's a place where the memory of his father looms large - perhaps because of that, a place he cannot leave. It's a place that invites a belief in magic.

In an age when animation can be put together on a computer, by an amateur, in minutes, it's wonderful to see this kind of craft still in existence, and the dedication and attention to detail that have gone into this film really shine through. Vahid Jafari's lovingly constructed puppets effortlessly convey emotion even though their faces hardly change. Afshin Roshanbakht's background in photography comes through in the framing of the landscapes, which also have a painterly quality. Lima is a rare gem and deserves a wide audience.