Finding Tenderness in the Absurd: Grace An on Cabbage Daddy and Animated Memory

In a world that often rushes past emotion in favor of efficiency, animator Grace An slows things down using humor, softness, and surreal imagery to explore memory, family, and identity.

Her animated short Cabbage Daddy, selected for the Sundance Film Festival Animated Shorts Program, is a deeply personal film disguised as something playful and strange. What begins with an odd title gradually unfolds into a tender meditation on love, inheritance, and the quiet ways we carry the people who raised us.

A Personal Path to Animation

For Grace An, animation has always been a way to translate internal experience into something visible. Drawn to the medium’s flexibility and emotional elasticity, she found freedom in animation’s ability to move between reality, memory, and imagination without explanation.

Cabbage Daddy marks a significant milestone in her creative journey, her most personal work to date and her introduction to a global audience through Sundance.

“There’s something comforting about animation,” An reflects. “It lets you talk about difficult things without having to explain them directly.”

Where Cabbage Daddy Began

The origins of Cabbage Daddy are rooted in family memory, specifically, the relationship between fathers and daughters, and the emotional language that exists beyond words.

Rather than approaching the film from a literal or autobiographical standpoint, An leaned into abstraction, allowing metaphor and visual humor to do the emotional work. The cabbage, strange, soft, and layered. It became a symbol for care, protection, and quiet devotion.

“It wasn’t about making something realistic,” she explains. “It was about making something that felt true.”

That balance between sincerity and absurdity gives the film its distinctive tone, one that invites laughter and reflection in equal measure.

Humor as an Emotional Bridge

While Cabbage Daddy carries emotional weight, it never becomes heavy. An uses humor not as a shield, but as an invitation, drawing audiences in before gently revealing the deeper currents underneath.

The film’s playful imagery disarms expectation, allowing moments of vulnerability to surface naturally. It’s an approach that mirrors real-life memory: fragmented, illogical, and often unexpectedly funny.

“Sometimes humor is the safest way to talk about love,” An says.

The Language of Visual Memory

Visually, Cabbage Daddy embraces simplicity and softness. Rather than polished realism, An favors expressive movement and stylized design, creating a world that feels handmade and emotionally immediate.

Animation, for her, becomes a form of emotional shorthand. A gesture, a pause, or a repeated motion can communicate what dialogue cannot.

“You can show feelings without explaining them,” she notes. “That’s what I love about animation.”

Animation Beyond Explanation

Like many filmmakers working in the animated shorts space, An sees animation not as a genre, but as a storytelling language capable of addressing adult emotion, cultural identity, and intimate experience.

Cabbage Daddy resists clear interpretation, allowing each viewer to project their own relationships and memories onto the film. It doesn’t demand understanding, it offers recognition.

“I don’t want people to feel like they have to ‘get it,’” An says. “I want them to feel something.”

Sundance and What Comes Next

Premiering Cabbage Daddy at Sundance feels both surreal and affirming for An, especially as the festival marks its final year in Park City.

“It still doesn’t feel real,” she admits. “But it’s exciting to know this small, personal story gets to live in a bigger space.”

Looking ahead, An hopes to continue telling stories that balance intimacy and imagination using animation as a tool for emotional honesty rather than spectacle.

Like Cabbage Daddy itself, her work is gentle, strange, and quietly resonant. A reminder that sometimes the most meaningful stories arrive wrapped in humor, metaphor, and unexpected tenderness.

Cabbage Daddy screens as part of the Sundance Animated Shorts Program.

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