PORTLAND FESTIVAL OF CINEMA, ANIMATION & TECHNOLOGY 2023 REVIEW! Two elderly women fight off death, literally, in Idan Gilboa’s stop-animated short, Deadline.
An elderly woman is having problems with a routine check-up at the local health clinic. She moves slowly because of her need for a walker and is quickly passed up by everyone trying to get an early number to be seen. The security guard is mean to her. A businessman shoved his way in front of her for an appointment ticket. Glaring down at her number, she realizes she’s going to be sitting in that waiting room for a long time. Fortunately, her friend is already there, and they languish the time away knitting.
After an odd-dimensional disturbance, the woman’s number is called out of order. When she enters the examination room, the specter of death is waiting for her with her picture on his ghostly tablet. The woman decides to run and inadvertently knocks over a fish tank. Death must immediately process the fish’s soul, and the old woman realizes there is a loophole in the Afterlife that allows her to postpone death for a moment. Of course, she takes full advantage of this loophole.

“…the specter of death is waiting for her with her picture on his ghostly tablet.”
The Israeli-born Deadline is a cute, fantastic, and very dark stop-motion short. The animation style resembles Robot Chicken with wired skeletons but different with clay-molded heads and hands. The facial animation is quite detailed, with blinking eyes and bodily motions to indicate breathing. There’s nothing lazy about Gilboa’s animation.
Once you fall in love with the animation, you’ll then fall in love with the story of these two elderly grandma’s going on a killing spree. Comedy-wise, Deadline follows the principles of escalation. The first death is simple and somewhat harmless, but it escalates in sheer numbers and devastation. All the while turning these ladies into full-blown action heroes… cute action heroes.
Deadline screens at the 2023 Portland Festival of Cinema, Animation & Technology.