Self-sabotage is real, and Pixar’s latest short film provides a clear analysis of how it can make or break a person.
No stranger to creating timely narratives through coming-of-age stories like Turning Red or projects centered around acceptance and belonging like Soul, director Searit Huluf is back to tell the story of a 20-something searching to find her identity in a world foreign to her through Self.
“Self is short for self-sabotage. I wanted to tell a story about someone who’s self-sabotaging themselves to belong because that’s something I personally have dealt with throughout my life,” Huluf told Blavity’s Shadow and Act.
“If you watch a lot of Pixar films there’s always a mother-daughter or like a brother or friends. This was really about one’s relationship with themselves and how they see themselves in the world,” she continued. “So that was part of it and the other part was talking about the immigrant experience too. We don’t have it blatantly saying she’s an immigrant in the film, mainly because there’s not any dialogue in it, but when you look at her design she does have African markings. She has the cross, the two elevens on the side of her eye, which means she’s from the Tigray region of Ethiopia. She has three kinds of carvings on her neck as well. I wanted to tell a story about an immigrant experience of coming to an urban city and the struggles of belonging and also directly indirectly being forced to conform.”
Source: Pixar SparkShort Film ‘Self’ Explores The Dangers Of Self-Sabotaging To Fit In
