Animated Short Film NINETY-FIVE SENSES From The Director of NAPOLEON DYNAMITE Offers Interesting Insight Into Life

I’ve got a beautifully made animated short film for you to watch today titled Ninety-Five Senses from the creative team behind Napoleon Dynamite and Nacho Libre, Jared and Jerusha Hess. The movie is one of the 2024 Oscar short film contenders.

The movie doesn’t really have any of the director’s signature humor, but it does offer some interesting and moving insight into life and our senses. The story is told through the reflections of a death row inmate finishing his last meal.

It begins as a gentle exploration of the body's five senses. But when Coy makes a shocking confession, the story takes a troubling but contemplative turn, as he thinks on his own final moments, wonders what waits for him after this life, and whether then we might have access to "all our ninety-five senses".

The film is split into six parts, and each part of the film is dedicated to a sense and animation was done by different artists. When talking about the story for the film, Hess told Cartoon Brew:

“The film was inspired by footage of death-row inmates awaiting lethal injection in Texas’s Huntsville Unit. It’s the busiest execution chamber in the United States. Chris Bowman and Hubbel Palmer, writers we’ve known and worked with for years, had been doing research in that area, studying ‘exit interviews’ with condemned men. They imagined a prisoner reviewing his life through each of his five senses. When we read what they came up with, we knew it was special. Funny, sad, smart.

Watch the animated short below and let us know what you think.