AFF presents: The Last Elephant on Earth

The Last Elephant on Earth

When fifteen-year-old Elle brings up the elephant in the room – a fiery meteor heading for Earth – her father denies the coming danger, preferring to follow the deranged advice of a child psychiatrist.

The Last Elephant on Earth is a 12min short film, selected for the Adelaide Film Festival in 2022. This Tallstoreez/ Change Media production is currently in post production, funded through the South Australian Film Corporation and the Adelaide Film Festival, through the SAFC/ AFF Short Film Fund Initiative, with in kind support from Panavision.

WINNER Best Short Script at the 2021 Australian Writers Guild The 54th AWGIES Awards for writer Piri Eddy - congratulations!

The Last Elephant on Earth has premiered at the Adelaide Film Festival 2022, please stay tuned for updates.

The Last Elephant on Earth has been selected for the prestigious Sitges International Film Festival 2023 in Spain to screen as part of their Family Official Selection. Congratulations to all involved!

Synopsis:

When an earth-destroying meteor appears in the sky, 15-year-old amateur biologist Elle and her best friend Jen wait for the adults to finally act. But when Elle confronts her recently widowed father, Richard, he refuses to acknowledge her fears, or the meteor hurtling towards earth. Instead, he sends Elle to see Dr Humboldt, a sinister child psychiatrist who convinces Richard that Elle is actually a critically endangered Sumatran elephant. Convinced he’s doing right by his daughter, Richard locks Elle in a cage in the backyard. As the meteor rushes towards Earth, Elle desperately tries to convince her father to see the truth, but he refuses to listen, even as rose bushes spontaneously combust and dead birds fall from the sky. With the end seemingly days, or even hours, away, Elle simply wants to see Jen one last time. But will Richard finally see reason, or will Elle spend her last days on Earth in a cage? An absurd coming-of-age tale, The Last Elephant on Earth explores friendship, loss, and the lies we tell ourselves in order to avoid the truth.

Image 1: Writer/Producer: Piri Eddy, photo by Johanis Lyons-Reid
Image 2: Director: Johanis Lyons-Reid, photo by Piri Eddy
Image 3: Director of Photography: Mike Tessari, photo by Hugh Freytag

Key creatives:

Writer/ Producer: Piri Eddy

Director: Johanis Lyons-Reid

Executive Producers: Jennifer Lyons-Reid and Carl Kuddell

DOP: Michael Tessari

The Last Elephant on Earth. Lighting Storm. photo by Piri Eddy

Project Description:

The Last Elephant on Earth (TLE) is a unique and timely short that playfully skewers the climate of absurdity threatening our existence. Combining the visual and tonal surrealism of Michel Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind with the dark childhood fantasy of Spike Jonze’ Where the Wild Things Are, TLE recalls the dreamlike stories of Kafka to present a bizarre abstraction of suburban Australiana. In disarming farce, it probes the paralysing anxieties and challenges of modernity with humour and emotional sincerity, focusing its story on the children who stand to lose the most from a condition of wilful blindness.