Ball Lightning is the true story of a refugee who fled the personal and social effects of Soviet-run East Germany after the end of WWII and immigrated to the United States in the 1960s. The story is told through the eyes of the surrogate daughter that she raised after she was forced to give away her own infant daughter as the iron curtain rose. The film is an intergenerational love story and is dedicated to her lost daughter, Esther, a reminder that the children separated from families because of war are never forgotten by those who love them.

Director's Statement

Ball Lightning blends traditional media—oil paint, gouache, watercolor—with digital tools such as TV Paint, Photoshop, and Procreate. Featuring 110 watercolor backgrounds and 52 oil paintings, the film’s mediums mirror its dual role as memoir and biography. The memoir sequences adopt a child’s perspective, using hand-drawn pose-to-pose animation on watercolor to evoke a sketchbook-like record of fleeting childhood memory. This light, gestural style contrasts sharply with the heavier oil-on-panel imagery representing Gusta’s former life in Germany. Shot against a wall, the straight-ahead oil animation lets gravity pull the paint, emphasizing its tactile unpredictability and the chaos shaping the protagonist's story.

Category: Animation, Short.
Themes: Family, War, Women.

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