Letter to a Pig is a 2022 animated short film (17 minutes) from Israel, directed by Tal Kantor.
A Holocaust survivor named Chaim gives a talk to teenaged children in an Israeli classroom. As the old man talks about how he hid from Nazis in a pig sty, hiding behind a particular pig that made eye contact with him. The kids react like teenagers will, with boredom and derision—but not one girl, who is focused on the old man's talk. After one boy is tossed out of class, the old man's talk grows darker, as he claims that he got the chance to take revenge on one of his tormentors. The girl then has a strange, surreal dream, where she has a chance to take revenge for the generations that came before her.
Tropes:
- Best Served Cold: The old man catches the class by surprise when he says he recognized a Nazi perpetrator on the street, years later. He surprises them more when he says that he took his revenge.
- By the Lights of Their Eyes: The boy's eyes can be seen shining as he hides in the far recesses of a pig sty, behind the pigs.
- Distant Prologue: The opening sequence shows a boy, fleeing from Nazis, hide in a pig sty. The film then cuts to the boy, now an old man decades later, telling the story to schoolchildren.
- Dream Sequence: The latter half of the film is a long dream sequence, in which the girl dreams of hunting and trapping a wild boar that seems to represent the perpetrators of the Holocaust.
- The Faceless: The Nazis shown chasing the boy in the opening sequence are just shapes. In the girl's dream, the Nazi hunting Jews in the woods is again a black shape, but this time, he dissolves.
- Final Solution: It was being perpetrated in Nazi-occupied Europe. An old man tells a story of how, when he was a boy, he survived by hiding for days in a pig sty as German soldiers hunted him.
- Gainax Ending: The girl's strange dream that ends the film. She dreams of a Nazi hunting Jews in the forest, with a snarling wild boar that looks far more dangerous than the pig that the old man talked about. Then she and her classmates turn the tables, hunting the boar, trapping it, and hanging it in midair. Then, all the kids look ashamed of themselves, and the pig turns from that gigantic snarling wild boar to a tiny piglet. The girl cradles the piglet, before setting it free. The end.
- Medium Blending: Traditional drawn animation is mixed with live-action elements, like the old man's hands, shown in live action as they grasp a coffee cup and a cookie.
- Splash of Color: The entire film is black and white, and shades of gray, everything except for the pigs, who are shaded pink.
