Best Animated Short films

The Meaning of Life” (Don Hertzfeldt, 2005)

What is it?
As its title suggest, this is DIY writer, director, animator and genius Don Hertzfeldt’s attempt to get to the bottom of exactly what is going on in our universe, in roughly 12 minutes. His conclusions may be comically obscure—life, death, decay, gossip, aliens, genetics, madness and the vastness of creation all feature—but it’s hard to escape the feeling that Hertzfeldt knows something we don’t.

What’s so great about it?
It proves that, in animation, literally anything is possible: Aside from a handful of voices (and a triumphal classical soundtrack), “The Meaning of Life” was entirely created by one man without the use of a computer. And yet this is a film that spans space and time, digs deep into the nature of existence, and comes up with both terrifying truths and almost indescribable beauty. On the release of his first feature film, It’s Such a Beautiful Day, one critic compared Hertzfeldt to Terrence Malick and Stanley Kubrick, references that are completely earned.