Review: Luis Grané’s “Nowhere Stream”

‘Nowhere Stream’ is the new animated short film by Luis Grané. It relates the experience of a sad but charming everyman as he tries and fails to form some kind of meaningful connection in the virtual world. The Argentinian-born L.A. artist has spent over 20 years working for some of the most venerable Western animation studios – it’s a list that includes names like Warner Bros, Aardman, Pixar, and Disney. The melancholy experimental short recently was a recent entry in the 2024 edition of Utah’s annual Slamdance Film Festival.

“Nowhere Stream” packs in an impressive amount of emotion in under seven minutes. The wide-eyed protagonist’s online search for a better life at first yields some AI generated tips that are vague but potentially helpful, like “Start a business in a garage,” and “Eat healthy.” He also receives suggestions that are weirdly specific, like “Be yourself but don’t look at the mirror,” and “Exercise for 52 minutes every day without offending anyone.” Of course, being healthy and productive is a good choice, but there is so much bleakness to being dispassionately told to make those choices. 

The character’s experience with digital spirituality is also a sad one. Ads for a pay for prayer site also serve only to depress the poor guy further, as does looking for a human connection through dating sites. The nature of digital creation is also explored here. A multitude of

3D rendered heads floating through repeated man-made landscapes seems like exactly the kind of manifestation of angst that would be produced by an animator who has worked on a string of critically acclaimed crowd pleasers like ‘Ratatouille’. These digital creations repeat and repeat and repeat, floating off to whatever grand destiny of a finished product awaits them. None of these themes of isolation and online-oriented alienation are new observations, but it’s still impressive how Grané invokes the totality of the situation using such sparse imagery. When things take a Buñelian turn for the worse, it seems that there is no end in sight for our protagonist, and the bleakness almost feels like it’s too much, from the perspective as a viewer. But then, we all find catharsis together in the sweet relief of nature, pen and paper – sometimes that’s all we need to feel real again.