As Awards season continues to ramp up, another of the year’s highly acclaimed, multi-award-winning animated shorts has arrived online for audiences to enjoy on demand. Retirement Plan by John Kelly, is a humorous, elegantly simple existential meditation on what one does (and doesn’t) with all the possibilities of life, now available to watch through The New Yorker‘s Screening Room and on YouTube — accompanied by an introduction penned by author David Sedaris.
A short animated film commissioned by Screen Ireland and RTÉ, Retirement Plan tells the story of Ray (voiced by Domhnall Gleeson) as he fantasizes about everything he’d love to do in retirement, once he finally has the “time.”
The film has screened at dozens of festivals around the world and picked up four Academy Awards-qualifying prizes — the Animated Short Grand Jury Award from SXSW (where it also took the Audience Award), Best Irish Professional Short from Animation Dingle, Best Animated Short from Bali International Film Festival and the Best of the Festival Award from Palm Springs ShortFest — as well as honors from Irish Film Festa, Guadalajara, Calgary, BIAF and more.
Learn more about Retirement Plan in our interview with John Kelly here and at retirementplanfilm.com.
