The Sandman (1991 film)

The Sandman is a British animated short film by Paul Berry from the year 1991. It refers motifs from the story Der Sandmann by ETA Hoffmann.

Action

It Eight is clock in the evening, the mother makes handicrafts and her son running with a drum in the room. When the dead man in the Kukucksuhr the hour strikes, the mother sends her child to bed with a candle. The child running scared the many steps in the dark house up to his bedroom, where it is hidden in the bed.

At night, the Sandman sneaks up the stairs and the child hears him coming. It hides trembling in bed, and believes that he is in his room, but it is the mother who looks after the child again. The child falls asleep. The Sandman, however, had just hiding in the room. He now dances around the bed and wants to wake the child, but this appears to have only a nightmare. When it finally opens his eyes, the sand man pelted him with sand, tearing something and disappears through the window.

He goes to his boys waiting birdlike in a nest on him, takes out his sand bag the boy's eyes and fed it to the young animals. The boy is left shocked and eyeless. He tries to find his way in the room - the final scene shows dozens also eyeless victims of the sandman.

Awards

On the Hiroshima International Animation Festival The Sandman won the 1992 Grand Prix and received in the same year at the Ottawa International Animation Festival the Craft Prize for the best animation.

The Sandman was nominated for an Oscar in the category " Best Animated Short Film " nominated in 1993, but could not prevail against Mona Lisa Descending a Staircase itself.