Voice in the Hollow

Swahili • 2022 • 10 min

Story

A haunting African fable of sisterhood, envy and ancient evil.

Why watch?

• Short of the Week: Best of 2022
• Vimeo Staff Pick
• Best of Fest, Los Angeles Animation Festival

“Dark, frantic and impactful,
this fable-like tale will haunt your memory banks and demand rewatching…
An absolute joy to watch.”
Short of the Week

Did you know?

The idea for The Voice in the Hollow came to Colombian writer-director Miguel Ortega when he was filming in a cavern in Northern California known as “the moaning cave.”

“The name came from a moaning sound, reportedly sounding like a young girl calling for help,” Ortega told Short of the Week. “In 1905, when the cave was excavated, they found a pile of skeletons from the dozens of people that were presumably drawn in by the sound of the moaning girl. The interesting part was that, at the bottom of the pile, was a 10,000-year-old skeleton of a young paleo-Indian girl.”

Ortega started wondering how that first girl fell into the pit, leading to this “Cain and Abel-type story, where the hole represented the devil and the father was God”.