With the film being a hand painted animation, can you tell us about your creative process? How long does it take?

My process has changed to more traditional filmmaking with my latest film Dollhosue Elephant (2025), but with Sweet Like Lemons my process was still very intuitive and focused on visual research. I would paint a large amount of styleframes and animated tests based on the different emotions I wanted to portray. Once these visuals felt correct I would figure out how to visually weave them into the narrative. The film does not follow a traditional narrative arch, so what really helped me when forming the narrative was including the scenes of the protagonist writing her email. These emails essentially work as chapter dividers, as short breaks of reality before we dive back into her mind and memories. 

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Because this film was largely self-produced I had to do a lot of commissioned work on the side, which in turn slowed down the process. I did all of the animation myself - I started working on this film in 2018 and finished it in 2023, so in total 5 years.