Скачать или смотреть Cage - Short Animated Film (2025)

CAGE is a one-minute animated short that sees authoritarianism as a dark entity summoned through ritual — with scapegoated immigrants offered as the sacrifice that sets the process in motion.

As a U.S.-born Russian immigrant, I made this piece to process the surreal dread of watching the country slide deeper into authoritarianism during Trump’s second term. I wrote, directed, designed, animated, and composited everything on my own.

Original score by Peter John ( Spearfisher )
(    / @spearfisher   )

The film follows a group of immigrants trapped in a repeating nightmare: riot police circle in patterns, MAGA officials clap in rhythm, and a distorted crowned eagle watches from above. Just when it seems like they might escape, they’re pulled into a golden mirage — a utopian vision of Trump’s America: peaceful, clean, fake. A field. A bench. A smiling Trump with a baseball glove. The illusion doesn’t last. The cycle begins again.

The “cage” is both physical and psychological. In the Soviet gulag, one of the ways to break a person’s spirit was to force them to do something meaningless every day — like digging a hole for hours, only to fill it back in before nightfall. It’s deeply painful to feel helpless, to know your actions have no impact. That kind of emptiness breaks a person. Being trapped in a loop — one that feels almost Lovecraftian — creates the same kind of hopelessness.

In that kind of despair, the state itself begins to feel like a monstrous force — a mindless, tentacled system closing in from every direction. This film is a reflection on power and the narratives we’re forced to inhabit.

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