Away is a computer-animated film from Latvia that was released in 2019. It was written and directed by Gints Zibalodis, who also animated the entire film by himself and composed the music for it.
A young boy finds himself in a strange land with a shadowy creature that’s after him. After finding a temporary refuge where he finds a motorcycle, a backpack with some supplies, and an injured yellow bird that he befriends, the boy embarks on a journey to evade the dark monster and discover what’s on the other side of the land he’s on.
Tropes in Away:
- Cats Are Lazy: While at Dream Well, the protagonist meets a group of black cats that do nothing but sleep and drink water from the well whenever a waterspout comes out of it.
- Dark Is Evil: The shadowy creature that’s pursuing the boy is the main antagonist of the film and any animal that it comes into contact with ends up dead.
- Enemy to All Living Things: Not only do animals end up dead after being inside the dark spirit for a period of time, but simply being near it is enough to kill those animals, as shown with the flock of white birds that the yellow bird was flying with suddenly falling from the sky.
- Kid Hero: The protagonist is a young boy who explores a strange land inhabited by various animals while avoiding a dark creature that’s able to kill him.
- Kids Driving Cars: The boy finds a motorcycle that becomes his main method of transportation across the land after spending a bit of time getting used to riding it.
- Minimalism: The film tells its straightforward, yet abstract story with only three major characters, no dialogue, and a simplistic art style.
- Onscreen Chapter Titles: The movie is broken up into four chapters that are named after important locations that the boy visits.
- Parachute in a Tree: The film opens with the child protagonist being stuck in a tree with his parachute open. A later dream he has during the film shows that he parachuted out of the plane he was on moments before it crashed.
- Placid Plane of Ankle-Deep Water: Mirror Lake is a body of water that’s shallow enough for elephants to walk through and motorcycles to drive on.
- Silence Is Golden: There’s no dialogue throughout the movie to emphasize its atmospheric tone.
