ACID RAIN. Psychedelic, Immersive Experience

Acid Rain, a short animated film by Tomek Popakul, has toured festivals around the world, winning awards in, among other places, the United States, Mexico, Switzerland, Japan, Canada, and South Korea. The Polish filmmaker’s work was nominated for the Annie Awards—the most prestigious honor in the world of animation. What is Acid Rain about? That’s not an easy question to answer. One thing is certain, though: if you’ve never tried psychoactive substances, you no longer need to. The film will give you that experience in full.

The animation tells the story of a girl nicknamed Young One, who, after running away from home, gets off at a railway station near an unspecified Polish town. An unusual encounter on a viaduct railing leads to a friendship with Skinny, setting off an unrestrained and dangerous adventure driven by narcotic trances. The boy and the girl—two exceptionally lonely and lost characters—visit several strange, surreal places before ending up at a rave deep in the forest. From that point on, the relationship between the protagonists takes an unexpected turn, and anxiety and tension begin to poison the film’s narrative.

Popakul’s animation is a psychedelic, immersive experience, blending elements of horror with a twisted fairy tale. The narcotic, sensual rush is conveyed through every possible means—from the visuals, which intriguingly combine the drab grayness of the Polish provinces with a garish color palette, through the editing, to the electronic music that aggressively dictates the animation’s tempo. Successive images seem to melt across the screen without supervision, inducing disorientation and a slackening of the senses. The filmmaker manages to drown the viewer in a puddle of acid rain. It is a production that is nearly wholly original and decidedly unconventional.

All the more gratifying is the fact that this short is not merely a fanciful cinematic sensation. The creator made sure the film tells a story that culminates in a warning. The edge is sharpened by the fact that the narrative draws on Popakul’s personal experiences with the 1990s rave subculture. Acid Rain can be read as a coming-of-age story—an account of a pivotal event on the winding road to maturity of the main character. A heroine who may have boarded the wrong camper van.

By combining narcotic psychedelia with an acidic rave atmosphere and distinctive retro animation, the Polish filmmaker offers an almost tactile experience of this specific subculture—one that is as exhilarating as it is frustrating. In any case, you can see for yourself just how unusual the animation is by pressing play on the material below.