Once in a Body: María Cristina Pérez on Embodiment, Fragility, and Animated Intimacy

In Once in a Body, the body is not a given. It is something temporary unstable and deeply felt.

Directed by María Cristina Pérez, the Sundance selected animated short offers a quiet introspective meditation on embodiment what it means to exist inside a form that both defines and limits us. Through delicate animation and restrained storytelling the film transforms the body into a space of memory vulnerability and impermanence.

Selected for the Sundance Film Festival Shorts Program Once in a Body stands out for its emotional precision and philosophical calm. It does not rush to explain itself. It asks viewers to sit inside the experience.

Animation as a Sensory Language

For Pérez animation is not just a visual medium it is a physical one. Her work treats movement texture and timing as emotional cues rather than spectacle. In Once in a Body the animated form becomes an extension of feeling allowing inner states to surface without dialogue or exposition.

Rather than presenting the body as fixed or whole the film explores it as something constantly negotiated. The animation reflects this instability emphasizing fragility over control and sensation over certainty.

She is interested in how it feels to inhabit a body especially when that relationship feels tenuous.

Vulnerability Without Performance

What makes Once in a Body particularly striking is its refusal to dramatize vulnerability. There are no heightened conflicts or narrative turns. Instead the film finds meaning in subtle shifts small gestures pauses and moments of stillness.

This restraint creates space for personal interpretation. The film does not tell viewers what the body represents. It invites them to project their own experiences of discomfort intimacy or disconnection onto the screen.

In doing so Once in a Body becomes less about a single perspective and more about a shared human condition.

A Feminine Perspective on Embodiment

Pérez’s work contributes to a growing body of animated films that approach embodiment through a distinctly intimate lens. Without positioning itself as autobiographical Once in a Body reflects sensitivity to how bodies are experienced rather than simply seen.

The film acknowledges the tension between visibility and interiority. The body is present but it does not perform for the viewer. It exists for itself.

This perspective aligns with Pérez’s broader approach to storytelling prioritizing emotional honesty over explanation and process over polish.

Sundance and Quiet Recognition

Premiering at Sundance marks an important moment for Pérez not as a culmination but as a continuation. Once in a Body is a film that feels deliberately unassuming content to exist softly within a festival environment often defined by urgency and noise.

Its inclusion in the Animated Shorts Program signals a growing recognition of animation as a space for philosophical and emotional exploration not just technical innovation.

At Sundance Once in a Body does not compete for attention. It waits. And in that waiting it resonates.

Being Here Briefly

Ultimately Once in a Body is a reminder of impermanence. Of the strange fleeting experience of being alive inside a form we do not fully control.

Pérez does not offer conclusions or solutions. She offers presence.

And sometimes that is enough.

Once in a Body screens as part of the Sundance Film Festival Shorts Program.

By Tyree Pope III | Kickin’ It With Tyree