Ceasefire
Medium: Animated Short Film
My senior project is an animated short film that explores the tension between resistance and surrender. Set within a cold, barren wasteland, a hardened soldier encounters a small blue flame. Interpreting it as a threat, the soldier moves to destroy it. Yet with every strike, the flame only grows larger, spreading across the frozen landscape.
At its core, the film reflects on the human instinct toward control: the tendency to fight, resist, and cling tightly to what is comfortable even when doing so only deepens suffering. The soldier’s battle against the flame becomes less about survival and more about the exhaustion that’s derived from endlessly struggling against something that was never meant to be conquered.
Drawing from Christian ideas of grace, surrender, and union, the film presents surrender not as a defeat, but as a transformation. What at first appears to be frightening or destructive is ultimately revealed to be restorative. Through the soldier’s journey, the film suggests that peace is not always found through force, but through the difficult act of laying down one’s pride and allowing oneself to be changed.
