WORLD OF TOMORROW EPISODE TWO: THE BURDEN OF OTHER PEOPLE’S THOUGHTS

Official Selection: 2018 Sundance Film Festival

WORLD OF TOMORROW: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/worldoftomorrow
WORLD OF TOMORROW EPISODE THREE: https://vimeo.com/ondemand/worldoftomorrow3

AN INTRODUCTION FROM DIRECTOR DON HERTZFELDT
it turns out that writing a story around the unscripted audio of a four-year-old is pretty easy compared to writing around the unscripted audio of a five-year-old. where once i had short and expressive reactions that could be gracefully edited, suddenly i was facing down long, rambling monologues from a small crazy person.

new audio with my niece was recorded in december 2014, just a month before “world of tomorrow” premiered. the recordings were wonderful, seized with imaginary visions of faraway lands, the madness of childhood pulling in every direction… but this time i couldn’t figure out how to make any of her wild thoughts fit with the things that i was actually hoping to write about. for a time i wasn’t sure if there would be another episode at all because i just couldn’t make these puzzle pieces connect.

what developed over the next year and a half was the most rewritten, reverse-engineered, and experimental projects i’ve ever seen. my four-year-old improvisational actress slowly became a sort of five-year-old co-pilot. and when all the weird mismatched pieces finally found ways to stick together, i was astonished at the picture that formed. it’s a story that could not have been written any other way. it’s one of those movies that you finish making and then are surprised that it exists.

mountains of love and gratitude to julia and winona for falling down this rabbit hole with me all over again – and to all of you for jumping in right after us. outside of theaters, i’ve decided to drop the release exclusively on vimeo again in order to make the film available to everyone at the same time. this is also the only site where 90% of your ticket price will go right into our new productions.

your support continues to fund every film, with no big distributors, studios, or publicists in the mix. i even do my own stunts. it’s really just been you and me for all these years and i think that’s pretty great.

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Don Hertzfeldt is a two-time Academy Award nominee whose animated films include “It’s Such a Beautiful Day”, “World of Tomorrow”, and “Rejected”. His work has played around the world, receiving over 250 awards, and made a special guest appearance on “The Simpsons” in 2014. Eight of his films have screened in competition at the Sundance Film Festival, where he is the only filmmaker to have won the overall Grand Jury Prize for Short Film twice.

Indiewire called “World of Tomorrow” “one of the best films of 2015,” while The Dissolve named it “one of the finest achievements in sci-fi in recent memory.” The A.V. Club described the film as “visionary” and “possibly the best film of 2015.” Rolling Stone ranked “World of Tomorrow” #10 on its list of the “Greatest Animated Movies Ever.”

PRAISE FOR “WORLD OF TOMORROW EPISODE TWO”

“A+ …another soulful masterpiece… an astonishing work of science fiction.” – Collider

“A+ …a dizzying spin down the rabbit hole of the human subconscious… blisteringly funny, deeply touching, and endlessly quotable… Don Hertzfeldt does it again.”
– Indiewire

“…a sequel in all the best ways… as beautiful and poignant as the first, perhaps even more so… a vibrant sci-fi masterwork…” – Birth Movies Death

“…stunning… a worthy successor to one of the best movies, be it short or feature-length, of the 21st century.” – Uproxx

“…a mind-melting must-see…” – io9

“…jaw-dropping… wildly imaginative… mesmerizing…” – The Film Stage

“…endlessly charming… as hilarious and heartbreaking as its predecessor.” – A.V. Club