How to Be Alone (2010)

Directed by

Andrea Dorfman

Genre

animation, music

Country

Canada

Runtime

5 min

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A short film animates a poem about ways to spend time alone after a breakup. It offers suggestions for finding comfort and confidence in your own company.

contemplativegentlereflectivereassuringcalmhopefulpersonalintimate

What happens

How to Be Alone is a Canadian short film, directed by Andrea Dorfman and released in 2009. The film animates a spoken word piece by poet Tanya Davis about things that a person can do on their own after the breakup of a relationship. The film premiered on October 6, 2009, at the Vancouver International Film Festival, and was subsequently broadcast on Bravo's Bravo!FACT Presents short film anthology series. In 2010 Dorfman uploaded the film to YouTube, where it quickly went viral, attracting over a million views in a matter of a few weeks. In 2013 Davis released a book edition of the poem, with illustrations by Dorfman. In 2020, Dorfman and Davis released the sequel film How to Be At Home, animating another spoken word piece about coping with isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic, as part of the National Film Board of Canada's The Curve series. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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